About

What the zoo is

The QIQCOP Zoo is a place to explore research problems in quantum information and quantum computation. Each problem page brings together a clear statement, the background needed to understand it, key references, and what is known so far.

Browse by field or topic, follow the sources, or share a problem you think belongs here. The collection grows through contributions from the community and review by the maintainers. Problem pages keep permanent links, so you can return to them as the research develops.

A problem page may be out of date or contain errors in its statement, status, progress, or references. Please treat each page as a guide to the literature and check the primary sources and recent work before relying on it or investing effort in a problem. If you find something to correct, tell us.

We would also like to highlight the following projects in the research community:

Open Quantum Problems
Prove2Me

What will be collected

We collect meaningful, significant unsolved problems in quantum information and quantum computation. Each problem should be formulated precisely in mathematical language, with clear assumptions and an unambiguous criterion for a solution.

Solved and Unsolved are the maintainer team's catalog designations. The team reserves the final right to interpret and determine each problem's status, and may revise it while retaining the reports and their history. A preprint, DOI, publication, or reported resolution does not automatically mark a problem Solved. The maintainers document reported progress; they do not peer-review manuscripts, verify proofs, or certify correctness.

How to contribute

You can propose a problem, submit a progress report, or report a correction. The maintainers check the information needed to document contributions, including sources and attribution, before publication. This does not include reviewing the correctness of proofs.

Propose a problem

Use the proposal form to send a problem, its sources, and what is known. No account is needed. State the problem as precisely as you can and name the papers in which it appears.

The maintainers check each proposal against the literature and publish accepted proposals as records with credit to contributors.

Contribute through GitHub

If you are comfortable with Git and TeX, you can add a record yourself in four steps.

Fork the repository and run node scripts/new-problem-id.mjs --create to create a problem template with permanent identifiers.
Write the statement, status, source, progress, references, and comment as TeX fragments in the record's fields, following the contribution guide, and choose one or two fields and one to five topics from database/tags.json. Run node scripts/migrate-metadata.mjs after changing the classifications.
Run node scripts/sync-tex.mjs to write the record's TeX form, then node site/build.mjs. The build rejects records with missing fields, unknown or miscounted fields and topics, unresolved citations, or unlabeled equations.
Open a pull request.

To correct an existing record or add a reference to it, use the Edit button on the problem's page or open a correction issue. Ordinary typo, citation, and status-reconsideration requests can cite the existing record. A correction introducing new research must include an archival source for that result.

Submit a progress report

Every new progress submission requires an archival link to the manuscript or paper reporting the result: arXiv, a Zenodo manuscript, another supported preprint repository, a stable journal or publisher paper record, or a paper DOI. Use Submit a progress report for resolutions, partial results, computational findings, and new research in corrections or follow-ups. Personal pages, GitHub posts, shared files, and attachments alone are insufficient. A source must identify the actual research document, not an unrelated paper or a DOI for software or data alone.

Preprints need not have passed peer review. Inclusion records what the source reports and does not certify correctness. No expert endorsement or proof-review report is required. Publication and peer-review information, where recorded, describe the source rather than grade its correctness.

Research progress reported through the portal or GitHub appears in the affected problem's Progress panel. Existing GitHub research reports, including external contributors' issues, are shown as concise direct links even without an archival manuscript. Internal maintainer discussions, catalog reviews, and engineering changes stay on GitHub and are not progress entries. Point out an earlier research report if a link is missing. This historical exception applies to pre-policy content; a new claim added to an old issue still requires an archival source.

The research progress policy explains supported sources, historical documentation, attribution, and status authority. AI tools are welcome, including through the MCP server; their use does not replace the source requirement.

How to cite

Cite the primary sources for any mathematical claim. To cite a problem page for its statement, status, or stable identifier, use the Cite button on that page. To cite the zoo as a whole:

@misc{qiqcop_zoo,
  title = {Quantum Information and Quantum Computation Open Problem Zoo (QIQCOP Zoo)},
  howpublished = {\url{https://qiqc-op.com/}},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Accessed 2026-10-08}
}

Use the MCP server

Connect your AI assistant through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to search the zoo, read problem statements and references, and gather the known results and remaining questions for a research session.

Use a client that supports remote MCP servers over Streamable HTTP. Connect with the address below; no download, local setup, or API key is needed to read the catalog.

Add the server. In your client's MCP or connector settings, add a remote server named quantum-open-problems. Paste this server URL and choose Streamable HTTP if a transport is requested:
```
https://api.qiqc-op.com/mcp
```
Connect your assistant. Save or enable the connection. For clients that accept URL entries in an mcpServers configuration:
JSON configuration for clients using mcpServers

Add this entry to your existing configuration, then reload the client's MCP connection. Some clients use a settings form instead.
```
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "quantum-open-problems": {
      "url": "https://api.qiqc-op.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}
```
Ask a research question. For example: “Use the quantum-open-problems MCP to find unsolved problems about quantum channel capacity, then summarize one problem's known progress and references.” The assistant can use search_problems, get_problem, read_problem, list_references, and build_context.

The connection reads the current hosted catalog, including newly published problems. If it fails, check the catalog service status and confirm that your client supports remote MCP. The MCP setup and tool guide also covers local clients and, for collaborators with an API key, authenticated research contributions. For direct downloads, the JSON catalog, taxonomy, and agent guide are available.

Licensing and reuse

The software uses Apache-2.0. New original catalog contributions use CC BY 4.0, allowing sharing, adaptation, and commercial use with attribution, license information, and an indication of changes. Contributors retain their copyright.

Cited papers and other third-party material retain their own terms. See the licensing scope and permissions, content license, and retained copyright notices. Cite the primary sources for mathematical results and preserve the supplied contributor credits when reusing licensed text.

Contributions

This project is developed and maintained by Bikun Li, Qicheng Tang, Changhao Li, Chengkai Zhu, Minbo Gao, Zhong-Xia Shang, Bin Cheng, Shihao Ru, and Naixu Guo.

We thank Yujie Zhang (University of Waterloo) for proposing the Quantum Foundations field and the field and topic refinements in issue #125.

We thank GaugeForge for its financial support of this project.

Mathematics is typeset with MathJax.