Mapping the quantum computing landscape: growth, collaboration, and thematic convergence

Abstract Quantum computing has rapidly emerged as one of the fastest-growing research domains, driven by both technological breakthroughs and the promise of computational advantages over classical systems. This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the global quantum computing literature from 1980 to 2025, comprising 31,662 publications indexed in Scopus and accumulating over 800,000 citations. Using advanced bibliometric techniques—including co-authorship mapping, keyword co-occurrence networks, co-citation analysis, and centrality measures—we characterize publication trends, institutional contributions, collaborative structures, and thematic evolution across the field. The results reveal exponential growth in output since 2015, led primarily by the United States, China, and Europe, with key institutions such as MIT, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, CNRS, and the University of Waterloo at the forefront. The intellectual structure exhibits a dual-core configuration, with foundational algorithmic work (e.g. Shor, Grover, Nielsen & Chuang) tightly connected to emerging NISQ-era applications such as quantum machine learning, cryptography, and hybrid algorithms. Keyword analysis reveals the progressive expansion from core quantum algorithms toward increasingly diverse applied domains in healthcare, finance, chemistry, energy, and climate modeling. Public funding bodies (e.g. NSFC, NSF, European Commission, DOE, DoD, MoST) and private-sector investment from major technology firms are jointly driving this translational acceleration. Together, these findings provide an integrated quantitative map of the field’s evolution, offering valuable insight for future scientific policy, international collaboration, and strategic funding initiatives.