Quantum Information Processing, Sensing and Communications: Their Myths, Realities and Futures

TL;DR

This paper surveys recent progress and challenges in quantum information processing, sensing, and communications, highlighting knowledge gaps and proposing future research directions for secure quantum technologies.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current quantum technologies, identifies key knowledge gaps, and outlines a roadmap for future developments in quantum error mitigation, machine learning, and integrated quantum sensing and communications.

Findings

Quantum error mitigation remains a critical challenge.

Quantum machine learning is advancing but still faces significant hurdles.

Future quantum communication aims for ultimate security and integration.

Abstract

The recent advances in quantum information processing, sensing and communications are surveyed with the objective of identifying the associated knowledge gaps and formulating a roadmap for their future evolution. Since the operation of quantum systems is prone to the deleterious effects of decoherence, which manifests itself in terms of bit-flips, phase-flips or both, the pivotal subject of quantum error mitigation is reviewed both in the presence and absence of quantum coding. The state-of-the-art, knowledge gaps and future evolution of quantum machine learning are also discussed, followed by a discourse on quantum radar systems and briefly hypothesizing about the feasibility of integrated sensing and communications in the quantum domain. Finally, we conclude with a set of promising future research ideas in the field of ultimately secure quantum communications with the objective of harnessing ideas from the classical communications field.