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

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.