Advances in Quantum Computing: Exploring Architectures, Technologies, and Future Directions

Dear Colleagues,

Quantum computers (QCs) base their computing functionalities on the phenomena and properties of quantum mechanics (QM), such as superposition and entanglement. While QC manufacturers build powerful quantum computing devices with increasingly large numbers of qubits, researchers worldwide utilize their potential in a wide variety of applications, ranging from cryptography to chemistry, medicine and pharmacology. Quantum machine learning algorithms facilitate the solution of complex, heterogeneous and multi-dimensional data, as well as the training process of LLMs and generative AI models. In the near future, AI-enabled QCs will significantly reduce the lengthy processes of drug design and manufacturing. Cryptography and current cryptographic algorithms will be replaced by their quantum counterparts that are physically impossible to break. Chemical, healthcare, drug development, and security are only a few of the industries that will take advantage of the new and revolutionary computing era, as researchers in the QC domain address the problems of reliability and scalability in order to allow this new technology to flourish.

Beyond quantum computing itself, the emergence of the quantum internet and next-generation quantum telecommunications is expected to revolutionize the way information is transmitted, processed, and secured. By leveraging quantum entanglement, quantum repeaters, and quantum networking protocols, future quantum communication infrastructures will enable ultra-secure information exchange, distributed quantum computing, and seamless interconnection of geographically separated quantum processors. Quantum information theory provides the fundamental framework for understanding the representation, transmission, and manipulation of quantum information, while quantum cryptography offers unprecedented levels of communication security guaranteed by the laws of physics rather than computational complexity. The convergence of quantum networking, quantum sensing, quantum communication, and quantum computing is anticipated to create entirely new paradigms for secure telecommunications, cloud-based quantum services, distributed artificial intelligence, financial transactions, critical infrastructure protection, satellite communications, and defense applications. Consequently, significant research efforts are being directed toward the development of scalable quantum network architectures, quantum error correction techniques, quantum routing protocols, post-quantum and quantum-safe security mechanisms, and practical implementations of quantum-enabled services that will underpin the future global communication ecosystem.

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 focused on, but not limited to, one or more of the following topics:

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

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

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