isqcmc

European Physical Journal, Special Topics (EPJ-ST) Quantum Computing and Musical Creativity: Exploring new Intersections

Guest Editors: Maria Mannone, Paulo Vitor Itaboraí, and Omar Costa Hamido

Following the intuition of Gabor, Nobel Prize for Physics, not only music can provide visual imagery and metaphors to describe quantum waves, but also quantum mechanics can be used to investigate the reality of sound. While music belongs to the realm of classical physics, the adoption of concepts and computational tools inspired by the quantum realm, such as quantum computing, can add a further dimension to music analysis, perception theories, modeling of the complexity of timbre, even enhancement or re-thinking of the musical instruments. In turn, musical expression could also be used in providing necessary intuition to emerging quantum technologies and their new paradigms. The exploration of different approaches to fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics through the world of musical sounds (superposition, coherences, measurement), jointly with the potentiality of quantum computing, are the themes of the present special issue. Topics include, but are not limited to, vocal theory analysis, quantum algorithms in music (Partitioned Quantum Cellular Automaton), quantum-computing aided composition, quantum signal processing (Quantum Probability Amplitude Modulation), music information retrieval, hybrid quantum-classical architectures, quantum machine learning, quantum natural language processing, quantum aesthetics, quantum computational musicology, sonification of quantum processes and phenomena.

🕓 Submission deadline: 1 February 2026

Articles should be submitted to the Editorial Office of EPJ ST via the submission system, and should be clearly identified as intended for the topical issue “Quantum Computing and Musical Creativity: Exploring new Intersections.”.

More detailed author information including paper types can be found in the Submission Guidelines. For the preparation of the manuscripts a special latex template (preferably single-column layout) is available here.

Guest Editors:

Dr. Maria Mannone
ICAR - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy
University of Potsdam, Germany

Paulo Vitor Itaboraí
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Germany
The Cyprus Institute, Cyprus

Dr. Omar Costa Hamido
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China
PQI - Portuguese Quantum Institute, Portugal

Open Access: EPJST is a hybrid journal offering Open Access publication via the Open Choice programme and a growing number of Transformative Agreements. If the institution of the CORRESPONDING AUTHOR is part of such a Transformative Agreement, the Open Access fee will be covered by the agreement partner. All agreements are listed with more details under TRANSFORMATIVE Agreements. Eligibility will be automatically verified when the corresponding author is requested to complete the relevant affiliation information after acceptance of the paper during the production process. Corresponding authors not affiliated to institutes with Transformative Agreements are redirected to proceed with “Please select your publishing model” and have to decide between paying the current Open Access fee or choosing the subscription option without any publication charges.

Notes:

• The authors can publish free of charge, with subscription mode. Alternatively, Open Access is allowed via Gold Route (with APC payment) or via Green Route (with 1-year embargo).
• Self-archival of preprints (version before EPJ-ST peer-review) is only allowed on Zenodo or ArXiV.
• According to the journal guidelines, the submissions may be one of four types:
  1. Minireviews (10-15 pages)
  2. Tutorial reviews (15+ pages)
  3. Original paper v1 (5-10 pages)
  4. Original paper v2 (3-5 pages).
• If third-part content is included, the authors shall provide written proof of authorization from the copyright holders at the moment of submission.
• If any AI has been used, authors are required to indicate where, to which extent, and which software was used.
• The authors are required to prepare their submissions in LaTeX, with all source files, following the EPJ-ST template.
• Concerning images, the authors are required to submit also the gray-scale version of the colored images.
• Submissions are possible through the EPS-ST website.

2023-2026 website created by OCH and Itaborala on GitHub.