Guest Editorial Quantum in Consumer Technology: Opportunities and Challenges

Quantum computers leverage the principles of quantum mechanics, including superposition and entanglement, allowing them to execute specific computations significantly faster than classical computers. The gate model is a common way to implement quantum algorithms, where the algorithms are broken down into a sequence of simple gates that operate on one or more quantum bits. This manipulation of a quantum computer involves a succession of unitary transformations that affect the different components of the superposition simultaneously, enabling significant parallel data processing and reducing the time of execution. As a result of these capabilities, quantum technology is expected to provide abilities and performance that are currently unattainable by classical methods. However, quantum hardware is under development and is prone to errors, which can negatively impact the performance of quantum methods. To address this challenge, error mitigation techniques are developed to reduce the impact of errors on the final outcomes. By leveraging the speedup offered by quantum hardware and using effective error mitigation techniques, quantum computing holds the promise of outperforming classical methods in various consumer applications (CA).