Time-reversal symmetry is of fundamental importance to physics. In the classical theory of time-reversal symmetry, the time-reversal symmetry of a quantum system is described by an anti-unitary operator, which is known as the time-reversal operator of the system. In this paper, we introduce and study a model of continuous-time quantum walk on a special locally infinite graph. After examining its spectral property, we investigate the time-reversal symmetry of the model. To our surprise, we find that its time-reversal symmetry can be described directly by a unitary operator, which contrasts sharply with that in the classical theory of time-reversal symmetry. Some other related results are also proven.
We consider the Grover walk on infinite trees from the view point of spectral analysis. From the previous works, infinite regular trees provide localization. In this paper, we give the complete characterization of the eigenspace of this Grover walk, which involves localization of its behavior and recovers the previous works. Our result suggests that the Grover walk on infinite trees may be regarded as a limit of the quantum walk induced by the isotropic random walk with the Dirichlet boundary condition at the $n$-th depth rather than one with the Neumann boundary condition.
Hitting times are the average time it takes a walk to reach a given final vertex from a given starting vertex. The hitting time for a classical random walk on a connected graph will always be finite. We show that, by contrast, quantum walks can have infinite hitting times for some initial states. We seek criteria to determine if a given walk on a graph will have infinite hitting times, and find a sufficient condition, which for discrete time quantum walks is that the degeneracy of the evolution operator be greater than the degree of the graph. The set of initial states which give an infinite h…
We study perfect state transfer in Kendon's model of discrete quantum walks. In particular, we give a characterization of perfect state transfer purely in terms of the graph spectra, and construct an infinite family of $4$-regular circulant graphs that admit perfect state transfer. Prior to our work, the only known infinite families of examples were variants of cycles and diamond chains.
A new model that maps a quantum random walk described by a Hadamard operator to a particular case of a random walk is presented. The model is represented by a Markov chain with a stochastic matrix, i.e., all the transition rates are positive, although the Hadamard operator contains negative entries. Using a proper transformation that is applied to the random walk distribution after n steps, the probability distributions in space of the two quantum states |1>, |0> are revealed. These show that a quantum walk can be entirely mapped to a particular case of a higher dimension of a random walk mode…
The lackadaisical quantum walk is a quantum analogue of the lazy random walk obtained by adding a self-loop to each vertex in the graph. We analytically prove that lackadaisical quantum walks can find a unique marked vertex on any regular locally arc-transitive graph with constant success probability quadratically faster than the hitting time. This result proves several speculations and numerical findings in previous work, including the conjectures that the lackadaisical quantum walk finds a unique marked vertex with constant success probability on the torus, cycle, Johnson graphs, and other c…
We study continuous time quantum random walk on a comb with infinite teeth and show that the return probability to the starting point decays with time $t$ as $t^{-1}$. We analyse the diffusion along the spine and into the teeth and show that the walk can escape into the teeth with a finite probability and goes to infinity along the spine with a finite probability. The walk along the spine and into the teeth behaves qualitatively as a quantum random walk on a line. This behaviour is quite different from that of classical random walk on the comb.
In quantum computation theory, quantum random walks have been utilized by many quantum search algorithms which provide improved performance over their classical counterparts. However, due to the importance of the quantum decoherence phenomenon, decoherent quantum walks and their applications have been studied on a wide variety of structures. Recently, a unified time-inhomogeneous coin-turning random walk with rescaled limiting distributions, Bernoulli, uniform, arcsine and semi-circle laws as parameter varies have been obtained. In this paper we study the quantum analogue of these models. We o…
We propose a physical implementation of the step operator of the discrete quantum walk for an electron in a one-dimensional chain of quantum dots. The operating principle of the step operator is based on locally enhanced Zeeman splitting and the role of the quantum coin is played by the spin of the electron. We calculate the probability of successful transfer of the electron in the presence of decoherence due to quantum charge fluctuations, modeled as a bosonic bath. We then analyze two mechanisms for creating locally enhanced Zeeman splitting based on, respectively, locally applied electric a…
Classical random walks on finite graphs have an underrated property: a walk from any vertex can reach every other vertex in finite time, provided they are connected. Discrete-time quantum walks on finite connected graphs however, can have infinite hitting times. This phenomenon is related to graph symmetry, as previously characterized by the group of direction-preserving graph automorphisms that trivially affect the coin Hilbert space. If a graph is symmetric enough (in a particular sense) then the associated quantum walk unitary will contain eigenvectors that do not overlap a set of target ve…
We define the hitting (or absorbing) time for the case of continuous quantum walks by measuring the walk at random times, according to a Poisson process with measurement rate $λ$. From this definition we derive an explicit formula for the hitting time, and explore its dependence on the measurement rate. As the measurement rate goes to either 0 or infinity the hitting time diverges; the first divergence reflects the weakness of the measurement, while the second limit results from the Quantum Zeno effect. Continuous-time quantum walks, like discrete-time quantum walks but unlike classical random…
The Pólya number characterizes the recurrence of a random walk. We apply the generalization of this concept to quantum walks [M. Štefaňák, I. Jex and T. Kiss, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{100}, 020501 (2008)] which is based on a specific measurement scheme. The Pólya number of a quantum walk depends in general on the choice of the coin and the initial coin state, in contrast to classical random walks where the lattice dimension uniquely determines it. We analyze several examples to depict the variety of possible recurrence properties. First, we show that for the class of quantum walks driven by in…
This paper is concerned with the continuous-time quantum walk on Z, Z^d, and infinite homogeneous trees. By using the generating function method, we compute the limit of the average probability distribution for the general isotropic walk on Z, and for nearest-neighbor walks on Z^d and infinite homogeneous trees. In addition, we compute the asymptotic approximation for the probability of the return to zero at time t in all these cases.
Anderson's nonstandard construction of brownian motion as an infinitesimal random walk on the euclidean line is generalized to an Hausdorff riemannian manifold. A nonstandard Feynman-Kac formula holding on such an Hausdorff riemannian manifold is derived. Indications are given on how these (radically elementary) results could allow to formulate a nonstandard version of Stochastic Mechanics (avoiding both the explicitly discussed bugs of Internal Set Theory as well as the controversial renormalization of the stochastic action). It is anyway remarked how this would contribute to hide the basic f…
A discrete-time quantum walk on a graph is the repeated application of a unitary evolution operator to a Hilbert space corresponding to the graph. Hitting times for discrete quantum walks on graphs give an average time before the walk reaches an ending condition. We derive an expression for hitting time using superoperators, and numerically evaluate it for the walk on the hypercube for various coins and decoherence models. We show that, by contrast to classical walks, quantum walks can have infinite hitting times for some initial states. We seek criteria to determine if a given walk on a graph…
Using the spectral distribution associated with the adjacency matrix of graphs, we introduce a new method of calculation of amplitudes of continuous-time quantum walk on some rather important graphs, such as line, cycle graph $C_n$, complete graph $K_n$, graph $G_n$, finite path and some other finite and infinite graphs, where all are connected with orthogonal polynomials such as Hermite, Laguerre, Tchebichef and some other orthogonal polynomials. It is shown that using the spectral distribution, one can obtain the infinite time asymptotic behavior of amplitudes simply by using the method of s…
Quantum random walk finds application in efficient quantum algorithms as well as in quantum network theory. Here we study the mixing time of a discrete quantum walk over a square lattice in presence percolation and decoherence. We consider bit-flip and phase damping noise, and evaluate the instantaneous mixing time for both the cases. Using numerical analysis we show that in case of phase damping noise probability distribution of walker's position is sufficiently close to the uniform distribution after infinite time. However, during the action of bit-flip noise, even after infinite time the to…
We show that probability is locally conserved in discrete time quantum walks, corresponding to a particle evolving in discrete space and time. In particular, for a spatial structure represented by an arbitrary directed graph, and any unitary evolution of a particle which respects that locality structure, we can define probability currents which also respect the locality structure and which yield the correct final probability distribution.
Quantum walks (QWs) describe particles evolving coherently on a lattice. The internal degree of freedom corresponds to a Hilbert space, called coin system. We consider QWs on Cayley graphs of some group $G$. In the literature, investigations concerning infinite $G$ have been focused on graphs corresponding to $G=\mathbb{Z}^d$ with coin system of dimension 2, whereas for one-dimensional coin (so called scalar QWs) only the case of finite $G$ has been studied. Here we prove that the evolution of a scalar QW with $G$ infinite Abelian is trivial, providing a thorough classification of this kind of…
