QuOp_MPI: a framework for parallel simulation of quantum variational algorithms

Abstract

QuOp MPI is a Python package designed for parallel simulation of quantum variational algorithms. It presents an object-orientated approach to quantum variational algorithm design and utilises MPI-parallelised sparse-matrix exponentiation, the fast Fourier transform and parallel gradient evaluation to achieve the highly efficient simulation of the fundamental unitary dynamics on massively parallel systems. In this article, we introduce QuOp MPI and explore its application to the simulation of quantum algorithms designed to solve combinatorial optimisation algorithms including the Quantum Approximation Optimisation Algorithm, the Quantum Alternating Operator Ansatz, and the Quantum Walk-assisted Optimisation Algorithm.