This project is a comprehensive investigation into the application of the exchange interaction, particularly with the realization of the SWAP^1/n quantum operator, in quantum information processing. We study the generation, characterization and application of entanglement in such systems. Given the non-commutativity of neighbouring SWAP^1/n gates, the mathematical study of combinations of these gates is an interesting avenue of research that we have explored, though due to the exponential scaling of the complexity of the problem with the number of qubits in the system, numerical techniques, though good for few-qubit systems, are found to be inefficient for this research problem when we look at systems with higher number of qubits. Since the group of SWAP^1/n operators is found to be isomorphic to the symmetric group Sn, we employ group-theoretic methods to find the relevant invariant subspaces and associated vector-states. Some interesting patterns of states are found including onedimensional invariant subspaces spanned by W-states and the Hamming-weight preserving symmetry of the vectors spanning the various invariant subspaces. We also devise new ways of characterizing entanglement and approach the separability problem by looking at permutation symmetries of subsystems of quantum states. This idea is found to form a bridge with the entanglement characterization tool of Peres-Horodecki’s Partial Positive Transpose (PPT), for mixed quantum states. We also look at quantum information taskoriented ‘distance’ measures of entanglement, besides devising a new entanglement witness in the ‘engle’. In terms of applications, we define five different formalisms for quantum computing: the circuit-based model, the encoded qubit model, the cluster-state model, functional quantum computation and the qudit-based model. Later in the thesis, we explore the idea of quantum computing based on decoherence-free subspaces. We also investigate ways of applying the SWAP^1/n in entanglement swapping for quantum repeaters, quantum communication protocols and quantum memory.