Quantum computers have made significant progress in the last two decades showing great potential in tackling some of the most challenging problems in computing. This ongoing progress creates an opportunity to implement and evaluate quantum-inspired metaheuristics on real quantum devices, with the aim of uncovering potential computational advantages. Additionally, the practical constraints associated with current quantum computers have highlighted a critical need for classical heuristic methods to optimize the tunable parameters of quantum circuits. Nature-inspired metaheuristics have emerged as promising candidates for fulfilling this optimization role. In this paper, we discuss both of these potential directions at the intersection of evolutionary computing and quantum computing while surveying some of the most promising advancements in these directions. We start with the review of quantum-inspired metaheuristics and then explore implementations of some of these quantum-inspired algorithms on physical quantum devices, capitalizing on the progress in quantum computing technology. Furthermore, we investigate the role of nature-inspired metaheuristics in enhancing the performance of noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers by fine-tuning their parameters. Finally, we discuss some of the recent progress at the intersection of both computing frameworks to highlight the current status and potential of the currently available quantum computing hardware. Synergies between these two computing frameworks demonstrate the potential of a strongly symbiotic relation that can contribute to the simultaneous advancements in both of these computing paradigms.

QSNs (QSNs) incorporate quantum sensing and quantum communication to achieve Heisenberg precision and unconditional security by leveraging quantum properties such as superposition and entanglement. However, the QSNs deploying noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices face near-term practical challenges. In this paper, we employ variational quantum sensing (VQS) to optimize sensing configurations in noisy environments for the physical quantity of interest, e.g., magnetic-field sensing for navigation, localization, or detection. The VQS algorithm is variationally and evolutionarily optimized using a genetic algorithm for tailoring a variational or parameterized quantum circuit (PQC) structure that effectively mitigates quantum noise effects. This genetic VQS algorithm designs the PQC structure possessing the capability to create a variational probe state that metrologically outperforms the maximally entangled or product quantum state under bit-flip, dephasing, and amplitude-damping quantum noise for both single-parameter and multiparameter NISQ sensing, specifically as quantified by the quantum Fisher information. Furthermore, the quantum anonymous broadcast (QAB) shares the sensing information in the VQS network, ensuring anonymity and untraceability of sensing data. The broadcast bit error probability (BEP) is further analyzed for the QAB protocol under quantum noise, showing its robustness—i.e., error-free resilience—against bit-flip noise as well as the low-noise BEP behavior. This work provides a scalable framework for integrated quantum anonymous sensing and communication, particularly in a variational and untraceable manner.

Quantum entanglement is a unique phenomenon of quantum mechanics, which has no classical counterpart and gives quantum systems their advantage in computing, communication, sensing, and metrology. In quantum sensing and metrology, utilizing an entangled probe state enhances the achievable precision more than its classical counterpart. Noise in the probe state preparation step can cause the system to output unentangled states, which might not be resourceful. Hence, an effective method for the detection and classification of tripartite entanglement is required at that step. However, current mathematical methods cannot robustly classify multiclass entanglement in tripartite quantum systems, especially in the case of mixed states. In this paper, we explore the utility of artificial neural networks for classifying the entanglement of tripartite quantum states into fully separable, biseparable, and fully entangled states. We employed Bell’s inequality for the dataset of tripartite quantum states and train the deep neural network for multiclass classification. This entanglement classification method is computationally efficient due to using a small number of measurements. At the same time, it also maintains generalization by covering a large Hilbert space of tripartite quantum states.

Quantum clock synchronization (QCS) aims to establish a shared temporal reference between distant nodes by exploiting uniquely quantum phenomena such as entanglement, single-photon interference, and quantum correlations. In contrast to classical synchronization and time-transfer techniques, which are limited by signal propagation delays, atmospheric disturbances, and oscillator drift, QCS protocols offer the potential to surpass classical precision bounds and enhance resilience against adversarial manipulations. As precise and secure time synchronization underpins distributed quantum networks, navigation systems, and emerging quantum Internet infrastructures, understanding QCS principles, capabilities, and implementation challenges has become increasingly important. This survey provides a unified and critical overview of the rapidly growing QCS research landscape, highlighting fundamentals, protocol types, enabling resources, performance constraints, security considerations, and practical implementations of QCS. We first introduce the theoretical underpinnings of QCS, including entanglement-assisted time transfer, Hong-Ou-Mandel interference-based synchronization, and quantum slow-clock transport. We then categorize the main QCS protocols, ranging from ticking-qubit and entanglement-based schemes to time-of-arrival correlation methods, conveyor-belt synchronization, and quantum-enhanced two-way time transfer. This organization clarifies the relationships between protocol families and their achievable precision advantages over classical methods. Key quantum resources such as spontaneous parametric down-conversion-based entangled photon pairs, Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger and W multipartite states, squeezed and frequency-entangled light, quantum frequency combs, and quantum memories are reviewed in the context of scalability and robustness. Practical limitations arising from decoherence, channel loss, dispersion, detector timing jitter, and relativistic effects are examined alongside emerging noise mitigation strategies. Security aspects—including eavesdropping on time correlations, intercept-resend attacks, and adversarial delay manipulation—are evaluated with respect to trusted and untrusted network architectures. Recent proof-of-concept demonstrations in fiber networks, free-space optical links, chip-integrated photonic systems, and satellite-ground platforms are summarized, followed by discussions of open challenges toward precise and secure global quantum-synchronized networks.