(Quantum) Physical Informatics

Dear Colleagues,

In 1968, Urdal, in his book The Nature of Information, suggested that one should use information theory to study the properties of physical systems, particularly the concepts of space-time as an additional approach to the use of standard laws of physics and chemistry. In 2012, Gurevich went further and defined “physical informatics” as the information background of physics and chemistry. In this sense, informatics laws have their own life and universal behavior in conjunction with our understandings of the physical world. While these ideas seem simple enough, the phrase “physical informatics” has taken on a life of its own, and the field has grown well beyond the simple views expressed by these authors. Thus, we wish to constrain this Special Issue of the journal Applied Sciences to the narrower view of the connections between the field of information and communications theory and the physical laws which govern the systems that are utilized in communications and computation systems. However, even this can be construed to be far too broad, in that there are many decades of work in these areas in just the classical world. Far less studied is how these ideas are conveyed into the quantum world. Thus, special attention in this issue will be given to the field of quantum (physical) informatics.

There have been a great many debates and heated discussions over the past few decades on physical informatics. However, many questions remain unresolved, even as physical systems are proceeding forward for applications, for example in quantum communications and computing. Consequently, it is worthwhile to bring the various views on a number of such unresolved issues together in a Special Issue that allows for their open discussion. Some of these issues are:

• What are the key quantum computer chips and prospects?
• What is the difference between information entropy and physical entropy?
• Are quantum key distribution schemes unconditionally secure? Under what conditions?
• What are the true dissipation limits in real quantum computers?
• How will physical noise limit quantum computing at various level?
• What is the truth of Landauer’s and Brillouin’s limiting principles?
• Can classical physical systems provide exponential speedup and random algorithm implementations?
• Are there analog computing schemes that could provide exponential speedup?
• Are Brownian computers possible, and are they sufficiently energy efficient?
• In what situations might stochastic resonance, noise excitation, give a viable method of enhanced performance?
• What effects of computational complexity have an effect on dissipation?

Papers due December 21, 2018, and are to be submitted to the journal’s website, while designating they are for the Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. David K. Ferry
Prof. Dr. Laszlo B. Kish
Prof. Dr. He Wen
Guest Editors

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