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Issue #4/2024
A. I. Terekhov
Bibliometric Analysis of Academic Literature on Quantum Information Processing
Bibliometric Analysis of Academic Literature on Quantum Information Processing
DOI: 10.22184/1993-7296.FRos.2024.18.4.296.312
The milestones are reviewed and a bibliometric analysis of the research development in the field of quantum information processing in 1990–2020 is performed. The focus is on the global publication of research papers, productivity of certain countries and organizations, and international scientific cooperation. By means of bibliometric indicators, the following areas are considered: dynamic development of the area, a high concentration degree of research and international academic networking, participation of large-scale corporations in such networks along with the universities and academic institutions, especially from Japan and military research entities, primarily from the USA. Russia is characterized by the following: a high concentration of research in the metropolitan agglomerations and its significant internationalization; significant contribution of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the growing role of universities in the development of the scientific base of quantum technologies, as well as the still weak involvement of the Russian commercial sector in the research activities. The data sources for analysis have been the bibliographic databases: Web of Science Core Collection and SCOPUS.
The milestones are reviewed and a bibliometric analysis of the research development in the field of quantum information processing in 1990–2020 is performed. The focus is on the global publication of research papers, productivity of certain countries and organizations, and international scientific cooperation. By means of bibliometric indicators, the following areas are considered: dynamic development of the area, a high concentration degree of research and international academic networking, participation of large-scale corporations in such networks along with the universities and academic institutions, especially from Japan and military research entities, primarily from the USA. Russia is characterized by the following: a high concentration of research in the metropolitan agglomerations and its significant internationalization; significant contribution of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the growing role of universities in the development of the scientific base of quantum technologies, as well as the still weak involvement of the Russian commercial sector in the research activities. The data sources for analysis have been the bibliographic databases: Web of Science Core Collection and SCOPUS.
Теги: quantum information processing; scientific publication; database квантовая обработка информации; научная публикация; база данных;
Bibliometric Analysis of Academic Literature on Quantum Information Processing
A. I. Terekhov
Central Economic and Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
The milestones are reviewed and a bibliometric analysis of the research development in the field of quantum information processing in 1990–2020 is performed. The focus is on the global publication of research papers, productivity of certain countries and organizations, and international scientific cooperation. By means of bibliometric indicators, the following areas are considered: dynamic development of the area, a high concentration degree of research and international academic networking, participation of large-scale corporations in such networks along with the universities and academic institutions, especially from Japan and military research entities, primarily from the USA. Russia is characterized by the following: a high concentration of research in the metropolitan agglomerations and its significant internationalization; significant contribution of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the growing role of universities in the development of the scientific base of quantum technologies, as well as the still weak involvement of the Russian commercial sector in the research activities. The data sources for analysis have been the bibliographic databases: Web of Science Core Collection and SCOPUS.
Key words: quantum information processing; scientific publication; database; bibliometric analysis
Article received: February 29, 2024
Article accepted: March 29, 2024
INTRODUCTION
There have recently been increasing discussions about a second quantum revolution that due to the quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement, opens up potential for the quantum information processing (QIP). It is believed that the basic QIP technologies (namely, the quantum computers and computing, quantum communication and cryptography, quantum probing and metrology), together with other groundbreaking technologies, will completely change the scientific and technological basis of development and the socio-economic world profile in the 21st century.
By the early 1980s, the idea of quantum computations was in the air. Its pioneers included American physicists P. Benioff and R. Feynman, Soviet mathematician Yu. I. Manin. However, the crystallization of this idea is associated with the 1982 issue of the International Journal of Theoretical Physics that published the proceedings of the Physics of Computation conference held a year earlier in the USA [1]. In his article, R. Feynman expressed a thesis that became significant for quantum computations: a quantum system consisting of N particles cannot be simulated by a classical computer, since its resources do not grow exponentially with N; such simulation is possible using a new type of computer, namely a “quantum computer” [2]. For more than a decade, the quantum computers remained an intellectual passion for scientists until two American mathematicians demonstrates that factoring an integer into the prime factors could be efficiently performed by a hypothetical quantum computer (P. Shor in 1994); such a computer can speed up the search process in an unstructured search space (L. Grover in 1996). These two practical applications, especially the first one challenging the existing cryptographic systems, encouraged interest in the QIP, while turning it into the separate widely recognized area of scientific research [3]. This was facilitated by a number of other circumstances: in the early 1990s, it became clear that according to the Moore’s law, the improvement of conventional computers would soon reach the quantum limit and require revolutionary technological changes; the development of physics, in turn, led to the occurrence of trapped ion technology, improved optical resonant cavities, quantum dots and other advances that make it possible to develop the efficient quantum locomotion devices, etc. [4].
By the early 2000s, the concept of a quantum computer began to took the features of practical achievability [5]. The development of ever new quantum algorithms [6] shifted the focus of quantum computations to the fight for “quantum supremacy” to stimulate new achievements in various fields: from chemistry, materials science, pharmaceuticals to the advanced production, traffic grooming, banking, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, defense, etc. [7–10]. Although the formal superiority of a quantum computer over a classical one was demonstrated in 2019 in the USA and in 2020 in China, the question about any useful “quantum superiority” remains open. According to the experts, the occurrence of an efficient, fault-tolerant quantum computer being the main goal of the global “quantum race” can be expected only in 10–15 years [11]. However, the existing “noisy” intermediate-scale quantum computers are capable of solving certain practical issues faster than their conventional counterparts [12].
The promising market opportunities, as well as potential security threats, have led to the development of policies and programs in the field of QIP by both certain countries and their alliances and alignments. The quantum ecosystems developed in various countries have their own specifications. For example, in the USA and China, the role of digital giants (IBM, Google, Microsoft or Alibaba and Baidu) is high similar to the state. The USA has significantly more startups than China, and China has a more highly centralized basis. At least 14 EU member states have national quantum initiatives, complemented by a pan-European flagship initiative adopted in 2018. Due to the absence of digital giants in the EU, the scientific and industrial associations are quickly developed, for example, a consortium of Airbus, Leonardo, Orange and other research institutes to study the project of a future European quantum communication network. Similar to the consortium for the quantum economics development in the USA, the European Quantum Industry Consortium was established. It is not typical for EU countries to have the significant military involvement in the QIP research in comparison to the United States and China.
Although the Russian Quantum Center (RCC) was established back in 2011, V. V. Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, spoke about the strategic importance of (“end-to-end”) quantum technologies in 2016 in his Address to the Federal Assembly [13]. In 2019, a road map (RM) for the quantum technology development was approved with a five-year budget in the amount of 51.1 billion rubles. The Government of the Russian Federation and several state corporations (Rosatom, Russian Railways and Rostec) signed the deeds of intent in three QIP areas: quantum computations, quantum communications and quantum sensors, respectively [14]. Two out of three developed RMs (prepared by Rosatom and Russian Railways) were approved in 2020. The National Quantum Laboratory was established under the auspices of Rosatom to act as the research and technological consortium becoming the basis of the domestic quantum ecosystem [8]. Due to the importance of quantum technologies for technological sovereignty, at the end of 2022, at least 100 billion rubles were allocated from the Russian budget for its development, and the quantum computations and communications retained their positions in the list of important “end-to-end technologies” when it was revised in 2023 due to the Western sanctions. Similar to the EU, we do not have any digital giants. The participation of military forces in the QIP studies is also low, and the imposed sanctions will greatly limit the possible international scientific cooperation.
Despite the impressive economic prospects and commercial forecasts, the QIP remains very much a science. Only further scientific research can resolve the significant technological and market uncertainties, thus, their development analysis, including the use of bibliometrics, is of interest. In this case, it is necessary to consider the QIP specifics. Even prior to publication by P. Shor of his famous article, he was interviewed by an employee of the US National Security Agency (NSA), who later wrote: “Such decryption ability could render the loser’s military resources almost useless and destroy its economics” [15]. The documents disclosed by E. Snowden in 2013, demonstrated that the US NSA was implementing a secret program to develop a “cryptologically efficient quantum computer” for hacking the Internet [16]. The interests of the military and intelligence services have definitely led to the confidential nature of some QIP research. However, it does not make the bibliometric analysis of the academic (open) literature useless.
Initial data
The development of QIP and its subfields has already been the subject of bibliometric analysis in a number of papers [17–19]. On the basis of them, this article makes improvements to the methods of searching for relevant publications, aimed at the wider coverage and in-depth elaboration of the main QIP topics. The prepared search query included more than 250 key terms that covered the three main QIP components (see Appendix). Two databases from the Web of Science Core Collection (WCC) were used as the main data sources: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE database) and Conference Proceedings Citation Index – Science (CPCI-S database). The additional data source was the SCOPUS database (SCO). In all cases, the «title – abstract – key» search was applied. The initial series from the SCIE and CPCI-S databases (at the time of study in March 2022) included 80,962 documents being relevant for the QIP (type: article, review, proceedings paper, letter) in 1990–2020 that served as the basis for bibliometric calculations. Information from the SCO database was used in a number of cases for additional comparisons.
RESULTS
The main analytical results are presented below in accordance with the objectives set.
Bibliometric indicators of formation of the QIP scientific base
Despite the difference in the composition and scope of the documents covered, bibliometric calculations based on the WCC and SCO databases demonstrate similar dynamics in the development of global QIP research (solid lines in Fig. 1): rapid growth over the entire interval with a significant acceleration in 1990–2003 and, especially, in 2015–2020. Some kind of slowdown in the growth of publication activity between 2003 and 2015 is partially determined by the dynamics of relative indicators (dashed lines in Fig. 1). The QIP research is a part of the quantum world study, therefore, the share of QIP papers in the total flow of “quantum” publications (identified by us using the general terms {quant} and {quantum}) could indicate the interest dynamics of the global community of field-oriented scientists in QIP. The accelerated expansion of this field at the initial stage (until 2003) was obviously based on the explosive interest of field-oriented scientists in new topics. However, at the middle stage (2003–2015) the expansion slowed down, probably due to the internal stabilization of academic interest in the QIP (Fig. 1), the reason for which could be a lack of breakthrough ideas, practical results, targeted funding, etc. However, the “slowdown” could also be due to the withdrawal of some papers from the open segment. The most rapid growth began in 2015 (Fig. 1), when the major players in the technology market joined the studies, and the governments of most technologically developed countries adopted the long-term programs and created the necessary infrastructure for the QIP development.
The share was varied significantly across the countries. According to Fig. 2, its greatest deviation from the global trend is typical for China and Russia. The Chinese «spurt» after 1997 led to its leadership in the QIP share in the total number of «quantum» publications that reached 21.2% in 2008. It would be logical to associate the subsequent decrease and stabilization of this share (around 15%) against the backdrop of growing government support with strengthening of the secrecy regime for Chinese research. Russia that ranks 6th in the world in terms of the number of “quantum” publications, is significantly inferior in the interest of field-oriented scientists in the QIP issues, although since 2013 (due to the RQC establishment and subsequent adoption of program documents) this interest began to be rapidly increased. A noticeable difference between the relevant curve for the USA and the global trend is the higher-than-anticipated growth since 2015 that was stimulated by the national QIP prioritization. The German field-oriented scientists progressively increased their interest in the QIP issues while entering the global trend only towards the end of the period.
In terms of the economic and technological transformations, quantum technologies shall interact with other revolutionary technologies, primarily nanotechnologies that are already recognized as a 21st century megatrend while leading to many breakthrough innovations [20]. Although the ratio of NANO- and QIP-publications in 2000–2022 is significantly in favor of the former (Fig. 3), they are inferior to the latter in terms of the average annual growth rate between 2015 and 2022: 4.8% versus 12.3%. The growth of the number of thematically intercrossing publications has been noticeably accelerated, while the influence was increasingly directed from NANO to the QIP. The quantum mechanics always plays a significant role at the length scale of atoms and molecules; however, it is often not the basis of research. In contrast, there are fields in the nanoscience that explicitly use nanosystems to study the quantum mechanical effects and use them as a resource in the quantum technologies (e. g., semiconductor quantum dots). As a consequence, the nanoscience progress contributes to better implementation of this resource [21].
Major global study participants
(countries and organizations)
At least about 120 countries participated in the QIP research; it is significant that the top ten in terms of productivity includes all industrialized countries from the G7 group, as well as China, Australia and Russia (Fig. 4). The elaboration of scientific knowledge is specified by a high concentration degree, with the top ten countries accounting for about 80% of publications, and the publication contribution of two leaders (USA and China) increased from 40% in 2004 to 53% in 2020 (Fig. 5). The top ten academic, government and university entities in the world that have made the greatest contribution to the QIP research are given in Figure 6. The significant commercial expectations are also explained by the research participation of the large-scale corporations and companies, mainly from the USA and Japan, such as Nippon Telegraph Telephone Corporation (Japan; 622 publications); International Business Machines IBM (USA; 615); Microsoft Corporation (USA; 296); Toshiba Corporation (Japan; 259); Hewlett-Packard (USA; 240); Nippon Electric Corporation (Japan; 259); Google Inc. (USA; 165); AT&T Inc. (USA; 164); Raytheon Technologies Corporation (USA; 116); Intel Corporation (USA; 99). The share of the corporate sector jointly accounts for more than 4.2% global QIP publications, in the USA it is equal to about 10%, in Japan – about 20%. If in the US MIT is the leader in the number of publications in the field of quantum cryptography, then in Japan it is Nippon Telegraph Telephone Corporation. Even in the open field, the American research devoted to QIP is noticeably militarized, for example, the US Department of Defense, together with the military research entities (laboratories of the armed forces or the US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command) accounted for 3.4%, and the US DOE together with еру national laboratories accounted for 8.4% of the country’s publication output. The military and industrial companies are making their contribution, including Raytheon Technologies Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corporation, etc. In addition, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) or IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency) sponsored more than 9% of publications in 2008–2020. However, the main contribution to the research still lies with the universities, first of all, the leading ones: in addition to the leaders (the University of California and MIT) (Fig. 6), 11.6% of national publications belong to the eight prestigious Ivy League universities. Despite the great contribution of the Academies of Sciences, the universities are also the main members in the published QIP research in Russia and China. In France, the National Center for Scientific Research is the leader (69% of all QIP publications).
International scientific cooperation and rivalry
An important factor in the development of research in the field of QIPs has become international scientific cooperation, the growth of which reflects an increase in the share of global QIPs, mainly the publications prepared by the scientists from several countries: from 21.5% in 2000 to 30.0% in 2010 and 33.8% in 2020. According to Fig. 7, the percentage of international co-authorship for the countries with a number of 10 QIP publications and more has a concentration range of 65–75%. Canada and Germany are among the top ten countries (Table 1). Australia and other European countries demonstrate a somewhat lower, but quite high rate of cooperation. The USA, Russia and Japan cooperate with other countries to a relatively moderate extent; China is the most self-sufficient country. It is interesting that the greater confidentiality of cryptography papers is not accompanied by a decrease in international scientific cooperation for all countries; however, in the cases of Russia and China, such a decrease seems significant (Table 1).
These data show that the rapid research development in the field of QIP was accompanied by an increasing share of new scientific knowledge at the international level. Unfortunately, the overall benefits of international scientific cooperation are increasingly being sacrificed to the political principles. The occurrence of quantum technologies coincided with the race between the USA and China for global technological supremacy, while the United States aims to maintain not just the relative advantages in key technologies, but the largest possible separation from the competitors. However, the Chinese obvious successes, especially in the field of quantum communications and cryptography (Fig. 8), are forcing the United States to resort to the sanctions policy. Under a different pretext, in 2022 the USA have already introduced unprecedented sanctions against the Russian science, including export control over the supply of special refrigerators, quantum software and cloud services to Russia. The similar export controls against China are currently being discussed. The “alignment” principle is also being enforced: thus, based on the geopolitical interests, the AUKUS alliance members (Australia, Great Britain, USA) entered into a quantum agreement to accelerate the quantum capabilities in the field of positioning and navigation. Obviously, this kind of activity cannot contribute to the overall research progress. The Russian movement in the world productivity ranking in the field of QIP is rather indicative: from the 7th place in 2000, it dropped to the 17th place by 2013, after which it began to develop and return to the top 10 countries in 2018. In 2020, it was inferior ti France (9th place) in terms of only 15 publications. International scientific cooperation played a significant role in returning the country to the top ten. Over a 30‑year period, Russia has had the cooperative relations with 65 countries, and the first seven countries in the list of its partners are the G7 members. Together with such countries, as well as Switzerland and Sweden, Russia was a part of the most cohesive “core” of the international co-authorship QIP connection network in 2000–2017 [22]. Moreover, the international co-authorship played an important role in increasing the visibility of domestic QIP publications. Thus, according to our calculations, ~92% of the 168 Russian publications in 2000–2019 that were included in the 10% most cited ones, had the co-authors from other countries. Thus, the impairment of external scientific relations due to the imposed sanctions may negatively affect the productivity and quality of Russian research. Since we will soon be forced to get used to the research autonomation, let us consider their internal organization and structure in more detail.
Domestic Russian Research Landscape in the Field of QIP
According to Table 2, the main domestic participants in the research are the research institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, universities, as well as the RQC. Although in 2014 the universities surpassed the Russian Academy of Sciences in terms of total publication contributions in the field of QIP, this indicator was achieved primarily due to the international and domestic cross-sector co-authorship relations. Moreover, the universities’ own contribution decreased from 50% in 1993–2006 to 25% in 2007–2020. In addition, the QIP publications with the participation of the Russian Academy of Sciences are on average more cited than those in which the universities participate (Table 2, column 5). Thus, the domestic university sector has not yet become an independent research driver in terms of the QIP, as expected by the university-centric policy pursued since 2006. It is possible to mention the Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and ITMO as the efficient providers of highly cited publications. However, the largest proportion of such publications (15.1%) still belongs to the Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Its employees (including those working abroad) published 13 articles, cited more than 100 times, while two of them were cited more than 1000 times. A graduate of this institute, A. Yu. Kitaev, has the most cited Russian publication dedicated to the fault-tolerant quantum computations with the help of anyons. The legacy of Soviet times, namely the technology cities (even without the typical academic cities like Novosibirsk), has made a significant contribution (~25%) to the country’s publication output.
The publication activity of the large-scale domestic corporations is still rather low: 53 publications in the field of QIP were prepared by Rosatom (mainly by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Dukhov All-Russian Research Institute of Automation”), 2 – by the Russian Railways. Such specialized companies as Yandex, Sber, Mail.ru, or Kaspersky Lab, do not have any publications. The knowledge-intensive commercial sector in the field of QIP is still being formed for the account of young startups (QRate, Quanttelecom LLC, QAPP, DEPHAN, etc.), being established mainly in the RQC. In general, the contribution of the country’s corporate commercial sector amounted to about 3.4% of all domestic publications that is less than the world average. Foreign corporations were the members in approximately 1.5% of the Russian publications.
Russia has conventionally been specified by a high degree of concentration of scientific potential, especially in the emerging high-tech areas that is confirmed by Table 3 and Fig. 9. Over the entire period of time, the scientific institutions in Moscow alone prepared more than the half of domestic QIP publications. According to Fig. 9, there is no noticeable trend toward the geographic deconcentration of QIP research (as in general): the Center’s contribution, with a few exceptions, fluctuates between 70 and 80, and the remaining part of Russia – 20 and 30%. To overcome concentration, it is necessary to more actively develop the scientific relations of the Center with the remaining part of Russia; the National Center for Physics and Mathematics being established in Sarov which scientific agenda includes the quantum technologies can also play an important role.
FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION
Having emerged in the 1980s as a visionary idea that interested only a few scientists on a professional level, in the early 1990s, the QIPs have already become a separate and widely recognized area of scientific research, for the developmental analysis of which the bibliometrics can be applied. The bibliometric analysis performed, in particular, demonstrated as follows:
rapid growth of the regional scientific base, although the high research concentration at the level of leading countries and global scientific institutions still indicates an early stage of its development. However, the high economic expectations are confirmed by the participation of large-scale corporations in the research activities, especially from Japan, and the desire to gain the military and strategic advantages in the future is confirmed by the participation of military research entities, primarily from the USA;
The QIP is an area of international cooperation, since it is difficult for any country to advance the quantum technologies independently, especially at an early stage of development. Thus, more than one third of global publications in 2020 were prepared by the international teams of scientists. Even in such a sensitive subfield as the quantum cryptography, the share of such publications in 2020 was 27.5%. Hence, the politicization of research, accompanied by the sanctions, export control measures, etc., can seriously hinder its development. About 29% of the Russian QIP publications in 2016–2020 were co-authored by one of the four leading Western countries, namely the USA, Germany, Great Britain, and France. The breaking of such bonds will get in a significant strike to the domestic research, moreover, their replacement in the eastern direction will not be easy;
along with the internationalization, there are a number of features typical for Russia in the development of the QIP research:
significant concentration of research in the Center, where the most powerful domestic research institutes, universities and RQC are located;
the leading role of the Russian Academy of Sciences that is among the top ten global institutions in terms of the QIP area productivity, and within the country surpasses the university sector in its contribution to the global top 10% of the highly cited publications. In addition, the cu-authors, being the scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences are second to the most highly cited (more than 1000 references) domestic publications;
against the background of active participation of the large-scale foreign companies in the research activities, the domestic corporate and commercial sector is still rather poorly represented (perhaps due to the closed nature of papers) that is discordant with the growing expectations of global commercial benefits from the quantum technologies.
It is believed that the quantum technology will be as revolutionary in the 21st century as the use of electricity was in the 19th century. However, there is no definite answer to the question of when and how this will happen. The quantum computations are at the forefront of the new quantum revolution having the potential to exponentially increase the computing power. Due to this fact, they promise to accelerate the flow of scientific discoveries and technological innovations in many areas, including by strengthening other general-purpose technologies such as artificial intelligence. However, the above facts are applied to the perfect fault-tolerant quantum computers (with the millions of qubits), occurrence of which is expected no earlier than 10–15 years later. The currently available intermediate-scale «noisy» quantum computers (with the tens or hundreds of qubits) are used primarily for computational support during the simulation of new products, materials, and pharmaceutical drugs. Moreover, they are distinguished by two above-mentioned demonstrations of formal superiority over their typical counterparts (in 2019 and 2020). However, in 2023, IBM reported that its 127‑qubit “noisy” computer outperformed the modern supercomputers at solving a very practical issue: simulation of the electron spin dynamics in the material to predict its properties such as magnetization [12]. This result raises the question of whether it is possible to achieve the efficient «quantum supremacy» even in the era of «noisy» quantum computers, before the completely fault-tolerant quantum computations are implemented. However, a significant scope of research and experimentation remains to be performed to implement the full potential of quantum computations. The quantum probing and communications are somewhat undeservedly overshadowed by the quantum computations while being technologically more mature. They already offer the commercially available devices such as magnetometers or quantum key distribution devices [23]. However, there are still many purely research topics in this case: the multi-qubit sensors with advanced capabilities, quantum repeaters, multilateral quantum secret sharing, etc. That is, the second wave quantum technologies still represent an area of research, for the dynamics and structure analysis of which the bibliometrics would continue to be useful, based on a wider set of updated data. Unfortunately, this analysis is a kind of the status quo registration for Russia on the eve of its disconnection from the world WCC and SCO databases.
AUTHOR
Terekhov Aleksander Ivanovich, Ph.D. in physical and mathematical science, leading researcher, Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution “Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences”, Moscow, Russia.
ORCID: 0000-0003-0266-1606 .
A. I. Terekhov
Central Economic and Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
The milestones are reviewed and a bibliometric analysis of the research development in the field of quantum information processing in 1990–2020 is performed. The focus is on the global publication of research papers, productivity of certain countries and organizations, and international scientific cooperation. By means of bibliometric indicators, the following areas are considered: dynamic development of the area, a high concentration degree of research and international academic networking, participation of large-scale corporations in such networks along with the universities and academic institutions, especially from Japan and military research entities, primarily from the USA. Russia is characterized by the following: a high concentration of research in the metropolitan agglomerations and its significant internationalization; significant contribution of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the growing role of universities in the development of the scientific base of quantum technologies, as well as the still weak involvement of the Russian commercial sector in the research activities. The data sources for analysis have been the bibliographic databases: Web of Science Core Collection and SCOPUS.
Key words: quantum information processing; scientific publication; database; bibliometric analysis
Article received: February 29, 2024
Article accepted: March 29, 2024
INTRODUCTION
There have recently been increasing discussions about a second quantum revolution that due to the quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement, opens up potential for the quantum information processing (QIP). It is believed that the basic QIP technologies (namely, the quantum computers and computing, quantum communication and cryptography, quantum probing and metrology), together with other groundbreaking technologies, will completely change the scientific and technological basis of development and the socio-economic world profile in the 21st century.
By the early 1980s, the idea of quantum computations was in the air. Its pioneers included American physicists P. Benioff and R. Feynman, Soviet mathematician Yu. I. Manin. However, the crystallization of this idea is associated with the 1982 issue of the International Journal of Theoretical Physics that published the proceedings of the Physics of Computation conference held a year earlier in the USA [1]. In his article, R. Feynman expressed a thesis that became significant for quantum computations: a quantum system consisting of N particles cannot be simulated by a classical computer, since its resources do not grow exponentially with N; such simulation is possible using a new type of computer, namely a “quantum computer” [2]. For more than a decade, the quantum computers remained an intellectual passion for scientists until two American mathematicians demonstrates that factoring an integer into the prime factors could be efficiently performed by a hypothetical quantum computer (P. Shor in 1994); such a computer can speed up the search process in an unstructured search space (L. Grover in 1996). These two practical applications, especially the first one challenging the existing cryptographic systems, encouraged interest in the QIP, while turning it into the separate widely recognized area of scientific research [3]. This was facilitated by a number of other circumstances: in the early 1990s, it became clear that according to the Moore’s law, the improvement of conventional computers would soon reach the quantum limit and require revolutionary technological changes; the development of physics, in turn, led to the occurrence of trapped ion technology, improved optical resonant cavities, quantum dots and other advances that make it possible to develop the efficient quantum locomotion devices, etc. [4].
By the early 2000s, the concept of a quantum computer began to took the features of practical achievability [5]. The development of ever new quantum algorithms [6] shifted the focus of quantum computations to the fight for “quantum supremacy” to stimulate new achievements in various fields: from chemistry, materials science, pharmaceuticals to the advanced production, traffic grooming, banking, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, defense, etc. [7–10]. Although the formal superiority of a quantum computer over a classical one was demonstrated in 2019 in the USA and in 2020 in China, the question about any useful “quantum superiority” remains open. According to the experts, the occurrence of an efficient, fault-tolerant quantum computer being the main goal of the global “quantum race” can be expected only in 10–15 years [11]. However, the existing “noisy” intermediate-scale quantum computers are capable of solving certain practical issues faster than their conventional counterparts [12].
The promising market opportunities, as well as potential security threats, have led to the development of policies and programs in the field of QIP by both certain countries and their alliances and alignments. The quantum ecosystems developed in various countries have their own specifications. For example, in the USA and China, the role of digital giants (IBM, Google, Microsoft or Alibaba and Baidu) is high similar to the state. The USA has significantly more startups than China, and China has a more highly centralized basis. At least 14 EU member states have national quantum initiatives, complemented by a pan-European flagship initiative adopted in 2018. Due to the absence of digital giants in the EU, the scientific and industrial associations are quickly developed, for example, a consortium of Airbus, Leonardo, Orange and other research institutes to study the project of a future European quantum communication network. Similar to the consortium for the quantum economics development in the USA, the European Quantum Industry Consortium was established. It is not typical for EU countries to have the significant military involvement in the QIP research in comparison to the United States and China.
Although the Russian Quantum Center (RCC) was established back in 2011, V. V. Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, spoke about the strategic importance of (“end-to-end”) quantum technologies in 2016 in his Address to the Federal Assembly [13]. In 2019, a road map (RM) for the quantum technology development was approved with a five-year budget in the amount of 51.1 billion rubles. The Government of the Russian Federation and several state corporations (Rosatom, Russian Railways and Rostec) signed the deeds of intent in three QIP areas: quantum computations, quantum communications and quantum sensors, respectively [14]. Two out of three developed RMs (prepared by Rosatom and Russian Railways) were approved in 2020. The National Quantum Laboratory was established under the auspices of Rosatom to act as the research and technological consortium becoming the basis of the domestic quantum ecosystem [8]. Due to the importance of quantum technologies for technological sovereignty, at the end of 2022, at least 100 billion rubles were allocated from the Russian budget for its development, and the quantum computations and communications retained their positions in the list of important “end-to-end technologies” when it was revised in 2023 due to the Western sanctions. Similar to the EU, we do not have any digital giants. The participation of military forces in the QIP studies is also low, and the imposed sanctions will greatly limit the possible international scientific cooperation.
Despite the impressive economic prospects and commercial forecasts, the QIP remains very much a science. Only further scientific research can resolve the significant technological and market uncertainties, thus, their development analysis, including the use of bibliometrics, is of interest. In this case, it is necessary to consider the QIP specifics. Even prior to publication by P. Shor of his famous article, he was interviewed by an employee of the US National Security Agency (NSA), who later wrote: “Such decryption ability could render the loser’s military resources almost useless and destroy its economics” [15]. The documents disclosed by E. Snowden in 2013, demonstrated that the US NSA was implementing a secret program to develop a “cryptologically efficient quantum computer” for hacking the Internet [16]. The interests of the military and intelligence services have definitely led to the confidential nature of some QIP research. However, it does not make the bibliometric analysis of the academic (open) literature useless.
Initial data
The development of QIP and its subfields has already been the subject of bibliometric analysis in a number of papers [17–19]. On the basis of them, this article makes improvements to the methods of searching for relevant publications, aimed at the wider coverage and in-depth elaboration of the main QIP topics. The prepared search query included more than 250 key terms that covered the three main QIP components (see Appendix). Two databases from the Web of Science Core Collection (WCC) were used as the main data sources: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE database) and Conference Proceedings Citation Index – Science (CPCI-S database). The additional data source was the SCOPUS database (SCO). In all cases, the «title – abstract – key» search was applied. The initial series from the SCIE and CPCI-S databases (at the time of study in March 2022) included 80,962 documents being relevant for the QIP (type: article, review, proceedings paper, letter) in 1990–2020 that served as the basis for bibliometric calculations. Information from the SCO database was used in a number of cases for additional comparisons.
RESULTS
The main analytical results are presented below in accordance with the objectives set.
Bibliometric indicators of formation of the QIP scientific base
Despite the difference in the composition and scope of the documents covered, bibliometric calculations based on the WCC and SCO databases demonstrate similar dynamics in the development of global QIP research (solid lines in Fig. 1): rapid growth over the entire interval with a significant acceleration in 1990–2003 and, especially, in 2015–2020. Some kind of slowdown in the growth of publication activity between 2003 and 2015 is partially determined by the dynamics of relative indicators (dashed lines in Fig. 1). The QIP research is a part of the quantum world study, therefore, the share of QIP papers in the total flow of “quantum” publications (identified by us using the general terms {quant} and {quantum}) could indicate the interest dynamics of the global community of field-oriented scientists in QIP. The accelerated expansion of this field at the initial stage (until 2003) was obviously based on the explosive interest of field-oriented scientists in new topics. However, at the middle stage (2003–2015) the expansion slowed down, probably due to the internal stabilization of academic interest in the QIP (Fig. 1), the reason for which could be a lack of breakthrough ideas, practical results, targeted funding, etc. However, the “slowdown” could also be due to the withdrawal of some papers from the open segment. The most rapid growth began in 2015 (Fig. 1), when the major players in the technology market joined the studies, and the governments of most technologically developed countries adopted the long-term programs and created the necessary infrastructure for the QIP development.
The share was varied significantly across the countries. According to Fig. 2, its greatest deviation from the global trend is typical for China and Russia. The Chinese «spurt» after 1997 led to its leadership in the QIP share in the total number of «quantum» publications that reached 21.2% in 2008. It would be logical to associate the subsequent decrease and stabilization of this share (around 15%) against the backdrop of growing government support with strengthening of the secrecy regime for Chinese research. Russia that ranks 6th in the world in terms of the number of “quantum” publications, is significantly inferior in the interest of field-oriented scientists in the QIP issues, although since 2013 (due to the RQC establishment and subsequent adoption of program documents) this interest began to be rapidly increased. A noticeable difference between the relevant curve for the USA and the global trend is the higher-than-anticipated growth since 2015 that was stimulated by the national QIP prioritization. The German field-oriented scientists progressively increased their interest in the QIP issues while entering the global trend only towards the end of the period.
In terms of the economic and technological transformations, quantum technologies shall interact with other revolutionary technologies, primarily nanotechnologies that are already recognized as a 21st century megatrend while leading to many breakthrough innovations [20]. Although the ratio of NANO- and QIP-publications in 2000–2022 is significantly in favor of the former (Fig. 3), they are inferior to the latter in terms of the average annual growth rate between 2015 and 2022: 4.8% versus 12.3%. The growth of the number of thematically intercrossing publications has been noticeably accelerated, while the influence was increasingly directed from NANO to the QIP. The quantum mechanics always plays a significant role at the length scale of atoms and molecules; however, it is often not the basis of research. In contrast, there are fields in the nanoscience that explicitly use nanosystems to study the quantum mechanical effects and use them as a resource in the quantum technologies (e. g., semiconductor quantum dots). As a consequence, the nanoscience progress contributes to better implementation of this resource [21].
Major global study participants
(countries and organizations)
At least about 120 countries participated in the QIP research; it is significant that the top ten in terms of productivity includes all industrialized countries from the G7 group, as well as China, Australia and Russia (Fig. 4). The elaboration of scientific knowledge is specified by a high concentration degree, with the top ten countries accounting for about 80% of publications, and the publication contribution of two leaders (USA and China) increased from 40% in 2004 to 53% in 2020 (Fig. 5). The top ten academic, government and university entities in the world that have made the greatest contribution to the QIP research are given in Figure 6. The significant commercial expectations are also explained by the research participation of the large-scale corporations and companies, mainly from the USA and Japan, such as Nippon Telegraph Telephone Corporation (Japan; 622 publications); International Business Machines IBM (USA; 615); Microsoft Corporation (USA; 296); Toshiba Corporation (Japan; 259); Hewlett-Packard (USA; 240); Nippon Electric Corporation (Japan; 259); Google Inc. (USA; 165); AT&T Inc. (USA; 164); Raytheon Technologies Corporation (USA; 116); Intel Corporation (USA; 99). The share of the corporate sector jointly accounts for more than 4.2% global QIP publications, in the USA it is equal to about 10%, in Japan – about 20%. If in the US MIT is the leader in the number of publications in the field of quantum cryptography, then in Japan it is Nippon Telegraph Telephone Corporation. Even in the open field, the American research devoted to QIP is noticeably militarized, for example, the US Department of Defense, together with the military research entities (laboratories of the armed forces or the US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command) accounted for 3.4%, and the US DOE together with еру national laboratories accounted for 8.4% of the country’s publication output. The military and industrial companies are making their contribution, including Raytheon Technologies Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corporation, etc. In addition, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) or IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency) sponsored more than 9% of publications in 2008–2020. However, the main contribution to the research still lies with the universities, first of all, the leading ones: in addition to the leaders (the University of California and MIT) (Fig. 6), 11.6% of national publications belong to the eight prestigious Ivy League universities. Despite the great contribution of the Academies of Sciences, the universities are also the main members in the published QIP research in Russia and China. In France, the National Center for Scientific Research is the leader (69% of all QIP publications).
International scientific cooperation and rivalry
An important factor in the development of research in the field of QIPs has become international scientific cooperation, the growth of which reflects an increase in the share of global QIPs, mainly the publications prepared by the scientists from several countries: from 21.5% in 2000 to 30.0% in 2010 and 33.8% in 2020. According to Fig. 7, the percentage of international co-authorship for the countries with a number of 10 QIP publications and more has a concentration range of 65–75%. Canada and Germany are among the top ten countries (Table 1). Australia and other European countries demonstrate a somewhat lower, but quite high rate of cooperation. The USA, Russia and Japan cooperate with other countries to a relatively moderate extent; China is the most self-sufficient country. It is interesting that the greater confidentiality of cryptography papers is not accompanied by a decrease in international scientific cooperation for all countries; however, in the cases of Russia and China, such a decrease seems significant (Table 1).
These data show that the rapid research development in the field of QIP was accompanied by an increasing share of new scientific knowledge at the international level. Unfortunately, the overall benefits of international scientific cooperation are increasingly being sacrificed to the political principles. The occurrence of quantum technologies coincided with the race between the USA and China for global technological supremacy, while the United States aims to maintain not just the relative advantages in key technologies, but the largest possible separation from the competitors. However, the Chinese obvious successes, especially in the field of quantum communications and cryptography (Fig. 8), are forcing the United States to resort to the sanctions policy. Under a different pretext, in 2022 the USA have already introduced unprecedented sanctions against the Russian science, including export control over the supply of special refrigerators, quantum software and cloud services to Russia. The similar export controls against China are currently being discussed. The “alignment” principle is also being enforced: thus, based on the geopolitical interests, the AUKUS alliance members (Australia, Great Britain, USA) entered into a quantum agreement to accelerate the quantum capabilities in the field of positioning and navigation. Obviously, this kind of activity cannot contribute to the overall research progress. The Russian movement in the world productivity ranking in the field of QIP is rather indicative: from the 7th place in 2000, it dropped to the 17th place by 2013, after which it began to develop and return to the top 10 countries in 2018. In 2020, it was inferior ti France (9th place) in terms of only 15 publications. International scientific cooperation played a significant role in returning the country to the top ten. Over a 30‑year period, Russia has had the cooperative relations with 65 countries, and the first seven countries in the list of its partners are the G7 members. Together with such countries, as well as Switzerland and Sweden, Russia was a part of the most cohesive “core” of the international co-authorship QIP connection network in 2000–2017 [22]. Moreover, the international co-authorship played an important role in increasing the visibility of domestic QIP publications. Thus, according to our calculations, ~92% of the 168 Russian publications in 2000–2019 that were included in the 10% most cited ones, had the co-authors from other countries. Thus, the impairment of external scientific relations due to the imposed sanctions may negatively affect the productivity and quality of Russian research. Since we will soon be forced to get used to the research autonomation, let us consider their internal organization and structure in more detail.
Domestic Russian Research Landscape in the Field of QIP
According to Table 2, the main domestic participants in the research are the research institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, universities, as well as the RQC. Although in 2014 the universities surpassed the Russian Academy of Sciences in terms of total publication contributions in the field of QIP, this indicator was achieved primarily due to the international and domestic cross-sector co-authorship relations. Moreover, the universities’ own contribution decreased from 50% in 1993–2006 to 25% in 2007–2020. In addition, the QIP publications with the participation of the Russian Academy of Sciences are on average more cited than those in which the universities participate (Table 2, column 5). Thus, the domestic university sector has not yet become an independent research driver in terms of the QIP, as expected by the university-centric policy pursued since 2006. It is possible to mention the Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and ITMO as the efficient providers of highly cited publications. However, the largest proportion of such publications (15.1%) still belongs to the Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Its employees (including those working abroad) published 13 articles, cited more than 100 times, while two of them were cited more than 1000 times. A graduate of this institute, A. Yu. Kitaev, has the most cited Russian publication dedicated to the fault-tolerant quantum computations with the help of anyons. The legacy of Soviet times, namely the technology cities (even without the typical academic cities like Novosibirsk), has made a significant contribution (~25%) to the country’s publication output.
The publication activity of the large-scale domestic corporations is still rather low: 53 publications in the field of QIP were prepared by Rosatom (mainly by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Dukhov All-Russian Research Institute of Automation”), 2 – by the Russian Railways. Such specialized companies as Yandex, Sber, Mail.ru, or Kaspersky Lab, do not have any publications. The knowledge-intensive commercial sector in the field of QIP is still being formed for the account of young startups (QRate, Quanttelecom LLC, QAPP, DEPHAN, etc.), being established mainly in the RQC. In general, the contribution of the country’s corporate commercial sector amounted to about 3.4% of all domestic publications that is less than the world average. Foreign corporations were the members in approximately 1.5% of the Russian publications.
Russia has conventionally been specified by a high degree of concentration of scientific potential, especially in the emerging high-tech areas that is confirmed by Table 3 and Fig. 9. Over the entire period of time, the scientific institutions in Moscow alone prepared more than the half of domestic QIP publications. According to Fig. 9, there is no noticeable trend toward the geographic deconcentration of QIP research (as in general): the Center’s contribution, with a few exceptions, fluctuates between 70 and 80, and the remaining part of Russia – 20 and 30%. To overcome concentration, it is necessary to more actively develop the scientific relations of the Center with the remaining part of Russia; the National Center for Physics and Mathematics being established in Sarov which scientific agenda includes the quantum technologies can also play an important role.
FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION
Having emerged in the 1980s as a visionary idea that interested only a few scientists on a professional level, in the early 1990s, the QIPs have already become a separate and widely recognized area of scientific research, for the developmental analysis of which the bibliometrics can be applied. The bibliometric analysis performed, in particular, demonstrated as follows:
rapid growth of the regional scientific base, although the high research concentration at the level of leading countries and global scientific institutions still indicates an early stage of its development. However, the high economic expectations are confirmed by the participation of large-scale corporations in the research activities, especially from Japan, and the desire to gain the military and strategic advantages in the future is confirmed by the participation of military research entities, primarily from the USA;
The QIP is an area of international cooperation, since it is difficult for any country to advance the quantum technologies independently, especially at an early stage of development. Thus, more than one third of global publications in 2020 were prepared by the international teams of scientists. Even in such a sensitive subfield as the quantum cryptography, the share of such publications in 2020 was 27.5%. Hence, the politicization of research, accompanied by the sanctions, export control measures, etc., can seriously hinder its development. About 29% of the Russian QIP publications in 2016–2020 were co-authored by one of the four leading Western countries, namely the USA, Germany, Great Britain, and France. The breaking of such bonds will get in a significant strike to the domestic research, moreover, their replacement in the eastern direction will not be easy;
along with the internationalization, there are a number of features typical for Russia in the development of the QIP research:
significant concentration of research in the Center, where the most powerful domestic research institutes, universities and RQC are located;
the leading role of the Russian Academy of Sciences that is among the top ten global institutions in terms of the QIP area productivity, and within the country surpasses the university sector in its contribution to the global top 10% of the highly cited publications. In addition, the cu-authors, being the scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences are second to the most highly cited (more than 1000 references) domestic publications;
against the background of active participation of the large-scale foreign companies in the research activities, the domestic corporate and commercial sector is still rather poorly represented (perhaps due to the closed nature of papers) that is discordant with the growing expectations of global commercial benefits from the quantum technologies.
It is believed that the quantum technology will be as revolutionary in the 21st century as the use of electricity was in the 19th century. However, there is no definite answer to the question of when and how this will happen. The quantum computations are at the forefront of the new quantum revolution having the potential to exponentially increase the computing power. Due to this fact, they promise to accelerate the flow of scientific discoveries and technological innovations in many areas, including by strengthening other general-purpose technologies such as artificial intelligence. However, the above facts are applied to the perfect fault-tolerant quantum computers (with the millions of qubits), occurrence of which is expected no earlier than 10–15 years later. The currently available intermediate-scale «noisy» quantum computers (with the tens or hundreds of qubits) are used primarily for computational support during the simulation of new products, materials, and pharmaceutical drugs. Moreover, they are distinguished by two above-mentioned demonstrations of formal superiority over their typical counterparts (in 2019 and 2020). However, in 2023, IBM reported that its 127‑qubit “noisy” computer outperformed the modern supercomputers at solving a very practical issue: simulation of the electron spin dynamics in the material to predict its properties such as magnetization [12]. This result raises the question of whether it is possible to achieve the efficient «quantum supremacy» even in the era of «noisy» quantum computers, before the completely fault-tolerant quantum computations are implemented. However, a significant scope of research and experimentation remains to be performed to implement the full potential of quantum computations. The quantum probing and communications are somewhat undeservedly overshadowed by the quantum computations while being technologically more mature. They already offer the commercially available devices such as magnetometers or quantum key distribution devices [23]. However, there are still many purely research topics in this case: the multi-qubit sensors with advanced capabilities, quantum repeaters, multilateral quantum secret sharing, etc. That is, the second wave quantum technologies still represent an area of research, for the dynamics and structure analysis of which the bibliometrics would continue to be useful, based on a wider set of updated data. Unfortunately, this analysis is a kind of the status quo registration for Russia on the eve of its disconnection from the world WCC and SCO databases.
AUTHOR
Terekhov Aleksander Ivanovich, Ph.D. in physical and mathematical science, leading researcher, Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution “Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences”, Moscow, Russia.
ORCID: 0000-0003-0266-1606 .
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