We present MPS-JuliQAOA, an open-source, Julianative framework for simulating the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) using Matrix Product States (MPS). The tool supports general cost Hamiltonians that are diagonal in the computational basis and integrates tensornetwork simulation with automatic differentiation for parameter optimization within a unified workflow. Built on the ITensor ecosystem, MPS-JuliQAOA replaces exact statevector simulation with an MPS backend, enabling QAOA simulations beyond the practical limits of full statevector methods when entanglement growth remains controlled. We demonstrate simulations of up to 512 qubits and 20 QAOA layers on 3-regular Max-Cut instances, and analyze runtime scaling and approximation accuracy as functions of bond dimension and circuit depth. The framework abstracts tensor-network and differentiation details from the user, allowing high-level Hamiltonian specification without requiring expertise in MPS methods. Source code is publicly available at https://github.com/lanl/JuliQAOA.jl/tree/mps.
We present MPS-JuliQAOA, an open-source, Julianative framework for simulating the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) using Matrix Product States (MPS). The tool supports general cost Hamiltonians that are diagonal in the computational basis and integrates tensornetwork simulation with automatic differentiation for parameter optimization within a unified workflow. Built on the ITensor ecosystem, MPS-JuliQAOA replaces exact statevector simulation with an MPS backend, enabling QAOA simulations beyond the practical limits of full statevector methods when entanglement growth remains controlled. We demonstrate simulations of up to 512 qubits and 20 QAOA layers on 3-regular Max-Cut instances, and analyze runtime scaling and approximation accuracy as functions of bond dimension and circuit depth. The framework abstracts tensor-network and differentiation details from the user, allowing high-level Hamiltonian specification without requiring expertise in MPS methods. Source code is publicly available at https://github.com/lanl/JuliQAOA.jl/tree/mps.
Until high-fidelity quantum computers with a large number of qubits become widely available, classical simulation remains a vital tool for algorithm design, tuning, and validation. We present a simulator for the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA). Our simulator is designed with the goal of reducing the computational cost of QAOA parameter optimization and supports both CPU and GPU execution. Our central observation is that the computational cost of both simulating the QAOA state and computing the QAOA objective to be optimized can be reduced by precomputing the diagonal Hamiltonian encoding the problem. We reduce the time for a typical QAOA parameter optimization by eleven times for n = 26 qubits compared to a state-of-the-art GPU quantum circuit simulator based on cuQuantum. Our simulator is available on GitHub: https://github.com/jpmorganchase/QOKit
The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) is a prominent quantum algorithm designed to find approximate solutions to combinatorial optimization problems, which are challenging for classical computers. In the current era, where quantum hardware is constrained by noise and limited qubit availability, simulating the QAOA remains essential for research. However, existing state-of-the-art simulation frame-works suffer from long execution times or lack comprehensive functionality, usability, and versatility, often requiring users to implement essential features themselves. Additionally, these frameworks are primarily restricted to Python, limiting their use in safer and faster languages like Rust, which offer, e.g., advanced parallelization capabilities. In this paper, we develop a GPU accelerated QAOA simulation framework utilizing the NVIDIA CUDA toolkit. This framework offers a complete interface for QAOA simulations, enabling the calculation of (exact) expectation values, direct access to the statevector, fast sampling, and high-performance optimization methods using an advanced state-of-the-art gradient calculation technique. The framework is designed for use in Python and Rust, providing flexibility for integration into a wide range of applications, including those requiring fast algorithm implementations leveraging QAOA at its core. The new framework's performance is rigorously benchmarked on the MaxCut problem and compared against the current state-of-the-art general-purpose quantum circuit simulation frameworks Qiskit and Pennylane as well as the specialized QAOA simulation tool QOKit. Our evaluation shows that our approach outperforms the existing state-of-the-art solutions in terms of runtime up to multiple orders of magnitude. Our implementation is publicly available at https://github.com/JFLXB/cuaoa and Zenodo [1].
Grover's algorithm is a cornerstone of quantum search algorithm, offering quadratic speedup for unstructured problems. However, limited qubit counts and noise in today's noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices hinder large-scale hardware validation, making efficient classical simulation essential for algorithm development and hardware assessment. We present an iterative Grover simulation framework based on matrix product states (MPS) to efficiently simulate large-scale Grover's algorithm. Within the NVIDIA CUDA-Q environment, we compare iterative and common (non-iterative) Grover's circuits across statevector and MPS backends. On the MPS backend at 29 qubits, the iterative Grover's circuit runs about 15x faster than the common (non-iterative) Grover's circuit, and about 3-4x faster than the statevector backend. In sampling experiments, Grover's circuits demonstrate strong low-shot stability: as the qubit number increases beyond 13, a single-shot measurement still closely mirrors the results from 4,096 shots, indicating reliable estimates with minimal sampling and significant potential to cut measurement costs. Overall, an iterative MPS design delivers speed and scalability for Grover's circuit simulation, enabling practical large-scale implementations.
We introduce JuliQAOA, a simulation package specifically built for the Quantum Alternating Operator Ansatz (QAOA). JuliQAOA does not require a circuit-level description of QAOA problems, or another package to simulate such circuits, instead relying on a more direct linear algebra implementation. This allows for increased QAOA-specific performance improvements, as well as improved flexibility and generality. JuliQAOA is the first QAOA package designed to aid in the study of both constrained and unconstrained combinatorial optimization problems, and can easily include novel cost functions, mixer Hamiltonians, and other variations. JuliQAOA also includes robust and extensible methods for learning optimal angles. Written in the Julia language, JuliQAOA outperforms existing QAOA software packages and scales well to HPC-level resources.
The role of entanglement in quantum optimization remains actively debated. To address this question, we focus on the fixed-parameter expanding-depth regime of the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA), where a compact two-parameter schedule is trained once on small instances and then applied as the problem size and circuit depth increase. To probe this regime beyond full state-vector simulation, we perform approximate matrix product state simulations for up to 50 qubits and 100 layers and quantify entanglement by the bond dimension. We observe an entangle--disentangle profile, with the peak bond dimension decreasing with depth and eventually saturating. This observation motivates an extreme approximation: projecting the state onto the product-state manifold (bond dimension one) after every two-qubit interaction. Based on this approximation, we introduce BOND-1, a quantum-inspired classical solver. Despite the drastic simplification, BOND-1 achieves cut ratios above 0.95 relative to the best known values on standard GSet MaxCut benchmarks with up to 20000 variables, and in some cases it matches those values. It achieves these results without per-instance optimization and has linear memory cost, while per-instance tuning can provide further improvement. These results show that, in this regime, a substantial fraction of the optimization power of QAOA survives even in the complete absence of entanglement. Our conclusions, however, are specific to this setting and do not imply that entanglement is unnecessary for quantum optimization in general.
Grover’s algorithm is a cornerstone of quantum search algorithm, offering quadratic speedup for unstructured problems. However, limited qubit counts and noise in today’s noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices hinder large-scale hardware validation, making efficient classical simulation essential for algorithm development and hardware assessment. We present an iterative Grover simulation framework based on matrix product states (MPS) to efficiently simulate large-scale Grover’s algorithm. Within the NVIDIA CUDA-Q environment, we compare iterative and common (non-iterative) Grover’s circuits across statevector and MPS backends. On the MPS backend at 29 qubits, the iterative Grover’s circuit runs about 15× faster than the common (non-iterative) Grover’s circuit, and about 3-4× faster than the statevector backend. In sampling experiments, Grover’s circuits demonstrate strong low-shot stability: as the qubit number increases beyond 13, a single-shot measurement still closely mirrors the results from 4,096 shots, indicating reliable estimates with minimal sampling and significant potential to cut measurement costs. Overall, an iterative MPS design delivers speed and scalability for Grover’s circuit simulation, enabling practical large-scale implementations.