3 research outputs found
Quantum Walks with Non-Orthogonal Position States
Quantum walks have by now been realized in a large variety of different
physical settings. In some of these, particularly with trapped ions, the walk
is implemented in phase space, where the corresponding position states are not
orthogonal. We develop a general description of such a quantum walk and show
how to map it into a standard one with orthogonal states, thereby making
available all the tools developed for the latter. This enables a variety of
experiments, which can be implemented with smaller step sizes and more steps.
Tuning the non-orthogonality allows for an easy preparation of extended states
such as momentum eigenstates, which travel at a well-defined speed with low
dispersion. We introduce a method to adjust their velocity by momentum shifts,
which allows to investigate intriguing effects such as the analog of Bloch
oscillations.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure