Entanglement dynamics and quasi-periodicity in discrete quantum walks

We study the entanglement dynamics of discrete time quantum walks acting on bounded finite sized graphs. We demonstrate that, depending on system parameters, the dynamics may be monotonic, oscillatory but highly regular, or quasi-periodic. While the dynamics of the system are not chaotic since the system comprises linear evolution, the dynamics often exhibit some features similar to chaos such as high sensitivity to the system's parameters, irregularity and infinite periodicity. Our observations are of interest for entanglement generation, which is one primary use for the quantum walk formalism. Furthermore, we show that the systems we model can easily be mapped to optical beamsplitter networks, rendering experimental observation of quasi-periodic dynamics within reach.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Quantum Walks with Entangled Coins

We present a mathematical formalism for the description of unrestricted quantum walks with entangled coins and one walker. The numerical behaviour of such walks is examined when using a Bell state as the initial coin state, two different coin operators, two different shift operators, and one walker. We compare and contrast the performance of these quantum walks with that of a classical random walk consisting of one walker and two maximally correlated coins as well as quantum walks with coins sharing different degrees of entanglement. We illustrate that the behaviour of our walk with entangled coins can be very different in comparison to the usual quantum walk with a single coin. We also demonstrate that simply by changing the shift operator, we can generate widely different distributions. We also compare the behaviour of quantum walks with maximally entangled coins with that of quantum walks with non-entangled coins. Finally, we show that the use of different shift operators on 2 and 3 qubit coins leads to different position probability distributions in 1 and 2 dimensional graphs.Comment: Two new sections and several changes from referees' comments. 12 pages and 12 (colour) figure

Asymptotic entanglement in a two-dimensional quantum walk

The evolution operator of a discrete-time quantum walk involves a conditional shift in position space which entangles the coin and position degrees of freedom of the walker. After several steps, the coin-position entanglement (CPE) converges to a well defined value which depends on the initial state. In this work we provide an analytical method which allows for the exact calculation of the asymptotic reduced density operator and the corresponding CPE for a discrete-time quantum walk on a two-dimensional lattice. We use the von Neumann entropy of the reduced density operator as an entanglement measure. The method is applied to the case of a Hadamard walk for which the dependence of the resulting CPE on initial conditions is obtained. Initial states leading to maximum or minimum CPE are identified and the relation between the coin or position entanglement present in the initial state of the walker and the final level of CPE is discussed. The CPE obtained from separable initial states satisfies an additivity property in terms of CPE of the corresponding one-dimensional cases. Non-local initial conditions are also considered and we find that the extreme case of an initial uniform position distribution leads to the largest CPE variation.Comment: Major revision. Improved structure. Theoretical results are now separated from specific examples. Most figures have been replaced by new versions. The paper is now significantly reduced in size: 11 pages, 7 figure

Quantum walks: a comprehensive review

Quantum walks, the quantum mechanical counterpart of classical random walks, is an advanced tool for building quantum algorithms that has been recently shown to constitute a universal model of quantum computation. Quantum walks is now a solid field of research of quantum computation full of exciting open problems for physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers. In this paper we review theoretical advances on the foundations of both discrete- and continuous-time quantum walks, together with the role that randomness plays in quantum walks, the connections between the mathematical models of coined discrete quantum walks and continuous quantum walks, the quantumness of quantum walks, a summary of papers published on discrete quantum walks and entanglement as well as a succinct review of experimental proposals and realizations of discrete-time quantum walks. Furthermore, we have reviewed several algorithms based on both discrete- and continuous-time quantum walks as well as a most important result: the computational universality of both continuous- and discrete- time quantum walks.Comment: Paper accepted for publication in Quantum Information Processing Journa

Universal Quantum Walk Control Plane for Quantum Networks

Quantum networks are complex systems formed by the interaction among quantum processors through quantum channels. Analogous to classical computer networks, quantum networks allow for the distribution of quantum operations among quantum processors. In this work, we describe a Quantum Walk Control Protocol (QWCP) to perform distributed quantum operations in a quantum network. We consider a generalization of the discrete-time coined quantum walk model that accounts for the interaction between quantum walks in the network graph with quantum registers inside the network nodes. QWCP allows for the implementation of networked quantum services, such as distributed quantum computing and entanglement distribution, abstracting hardware implementation and the transmission of quantum information through channels. Multiple interacting quantum walks can be used to propagate entangled control signals across the network in parallel. We demonstrate how to use QWCP to perform distributed multi-qubit controlled gates, which shows the universality of the protocol for distributed quantum computing. Furthermore, we apply the QWCP to the task of entanglement distribution in a quantum network.Comment: 27 pages; 2 figures. A preliminary version of this work was presented at IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering 2021 (QCE21). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2106.0983

Two quantum walkers sharing coins

We consider two independent quantum walks on separate lines augmented by partial or full swapping of coins after each step. For classical random walks, swapping or not swapping coins makes little difference to the random walk characteristics, but we show that quantum walks with partial swapping of coins have complicated yet elegant inter-walker correlations. Specifically we study the joint position distribution of the reduced two-walker state after tracing out the coins and analyze total, classical and quantum correlations in terms of the mutual information, the quantum mutual information, and the measurement-induced disturbance. Our analysis shows intriguing quantum features without classical analogues.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure