Quantum Computation and Its Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Quantum computers (QCs) base their computing functionalities on the phenomena and properties of quantum mechanics (QM) theories, such as superposition and entanglement. When super-powerful quantum computing devices, with large numbers of qubits, become reality, it will shake our world! A large variety of applications will appear, ranging from cryptography to chemistry, medicine and pharmacology. Additionally, powerful, quantum machine learning algorithms will be proposed and applied to solve complex, heterogeneous and multi-dimensional data, and the majority of scientific fields will flourish. In particular, within days or months QCs will propose solutions for vaccines and drugs, which currently take years to discover and test. Additionally, cryptography and current cryptographic algorithms will no longer have power. Codes and passwords will break within seconds. In addition, chemical, healthcare and drug development industries, security and so on, will take advantage of the new and revolutionary computing era. Therefore, new meta-quantum cryptographic algorithms will have to be devised and take the lead. However, the problem of QC reliability remains, especially as qubit number and circuit size escalate.

In this Special Issue, research works as well as practical applications are of interest. We invite authors from universities and research centers as well as independent researchers to contribute. The Special Issue will mainly focus on high-quality research works focused on, but not limited to, one or more of the following topics:

• Quantum computing research and applications on chemistry and material science, blockchain and cybersecurity, logistics, healthcare, agriculture, finance, and so on;
• Quantum machine learning (algorithms, applications, and techniques);
• Quantum processing units (QPUs) and error correction;
• Quantum drug development;
• Parallel computations on quantum computing devices;
• Algorithms and quantum computing in the NISQ (noisy intermediate-scale quantum) era;
• Quantum key distribution;
• Post-quantum cryptography;
• Quantum annealing and adiabatic quantum computing;
• Quantum telecommunications;
• Quantum networking and quantum internet;
• Benchmarking quantum computing devices;
• Quantum computing and optimization (i.e., modelling and simulation);
• Quantum information theory (i.e., entropy, information channels);
• Classical shadows;
• Future trends of quantum computing;
• Quantum applications (i.e., medical, defense, energy system, smart grid etc.).

Prof. Dr. Ilias K. Savvas
Dr. Apostolos Xenakis
Guest Editors

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