  Tools necessary for quantum simulations of $1+1$ dimensional quantum
chromodynamics are developed. When formulated in axial gauge and with two
flavors of quarks, this system requires 12 qubits per spatial site with the
gauge fields included via non-local interactions. Classical computations and
D-Wave's quantum annealer Advantage are used to determine the hadronic
spectrum, enabling a decomposition of the masses and a study of quark
entanglement. Color edge states confined within a screening length of the end
of the lattice are found. IBM's 7-qubit quantum computers, ibmq_jakarta and
ibm_perth, are used to compute dynamics from the trivial vacuum in one-flavor
QCD with one spatial site. More generally, the Hamiltonian and quantum circuits
for time evolution of $1+1$ dimensional $SU(N_c)$ gauge theory with $N_f$
flavors of quarks are developed, and the resource requirements for large-scale
quantum simulations are estimated.
