Quantum random walks have been much studied recently, largely due to their highly nonclassical behavior. In this paper, we study one possible route to classical behavior for the discrete quantum random walk on the line: the use of multiple quantum ``coins'' (or more generally, coins of higher dimension) in order to diminish the effects of interference between paths. We find solutions to this system in terms of the single-coin random walk, and compare the asymptotic limit of these solutions to numerical simulations. We find exact analytical expressions for the time dependence of the first two moments, and show that in the long-time limit the ``quantum-mechanical'' behavior of the one-coin walk persists, even if each coin is flipped only twice. We further show that this is generic for a very broad class of possible walks, and that this behavior disappears only in the limit of a new coin for every step of the walk.
We look at two possible routes to classical behavior for the discrete quantum random walk on the integers: decoherence in the quantum "coin" which drives the walk, or the use of higher-dimensional (or multiple) coins to dilute the effects of interference. We use the position variance as an indicator of classical behavior and find analytical expressions for this in the long-time limit; we see that the multicoin walk retains the "quantum" quadratic growth of the variance except in the limit of a new coin for every step, while the walk with decoherence exhibits "classical" linear growth of the variance even for weak decoherence.
We consider a discrete-time 2-state quantum walk on the line. The state of the quantum walker evolves according to a rule which is determined by a coin-flip operator and a position-shift operator. In this paper we take a 3-periodic time evolution as the rule. For such a quantum walk, we get a limit distribution which expresses the asymptotic behavior of the walker after a long time. The limit distribution is different from that of a time-independent quantum walk or a 2-period time-dependent quantum walk. We give some analytical results and then consider a number of variants of our model and indicate the result of simulations for these ones.
The quantum random walk has been much studied recently, largely due to its highly nonclassical behavior. In this paper, we study one possible route to classical behavior for the discrete quantum walk on the line: the presence of decoherence in the quantum ``coin'' which drives the walk. We find exact analytical expressions for the time dependence of the first two moments of position, and show that in the long-time limit the variance grows linearly with time, unlike the unitary walk. We compare this to the results of direct numerical simulation, and see how the form of the position distribution changes from the unitary to the usual classical result as we increase the strength of the decoherence.
It is believed that in the long time limit, the limiting behavior of the discrete-time quantum random walk will cross from quantum to classical if we take into account of the decoherence. The computer simulation has already shown that for the discrete-time one-dimensional Hadamard quantum random walk with coin decoherence such that the measurement operators on the coin space are defined by A0 = Ic √1 − p, A1 = |R > < R| √p and A2 = |L > < L > < L| √p is diffusive when 0 < p ≤ 1 and it is ballistic when P = 0. In this thesis, we are going to let p to be dynamical depending on the step t, that is, we consider p = 1/tß, ß ≥ 0 and we found that it has sub-ballistic behavior for 0 < ß < 1. Furthermore, we study not only the coin decoherence, but the total decoherence, that means the measurement operators apply on the Hilbert space H = Hp ⊗ Hc instead of the coin space only. We find that the results are both sub-ballistic for the coin and total decoherence when 0 < ß < 1. Moreover, according to the model given in [T. A. Brun, H. A. Carteret, and A. Ambainis, Phys. Rev. A 67, 032304 (2003)], we know that if the walker has chance to hop to the second nearest neighbor lattice in one step, the long-time behavior is also sub-ballistic and it is similar to that the walker can hop to the third nearest neighbor lattice in one step. By the way, we also find that if we combine the classical part of the model given in [Jing Zhao and Peiqing Tong. One-dimensional quantum walks subject to next nearest neighbor hopping decoherence, Nanjing Normal University, preprint (2014)] with different step length, then this decoherence will also cross from quantum to classical. Finally, we define the quantum γ-stable walk and obtain the quantum γ-stable law with decoherence. By this decoherence, we can see that the limiting behavior of the quantum stable walk will also cross from quantum to classical and we shows that it spreads out faster than the classical stable walk.
Quantization of a random-walk model is performed by giving a qudit (a multicomponent wave function) to a walker at site and by introducing a quantum coin, which is a matrix representation of a unitary transformation. In quantum walks, the qudit of the walker is mixed according to the quantum coin at each time step, when the walker hops to other sites. As special cases of the quantum walks driven by high-dimensional quantum coins generally studied by Brun, Carteret, and Ambainis, we study the models obtained by choosing rotation as the unitary transformation, whose matrix representations determine quantum coins. We show that Wigner's
(2j+1)-dimensional unitary representations of rotations with half-integers
j's are useful to analyze the probability laws of quantum walks. For any value of half-integer
j, convergence of all moments of walker's pseudovelocity in the long-time limit is proved. It is generally shown for the present models that, if
(2j+1) is even, the probability measure of limit distribution is given by a superposition of
(2j+1)∕2 terms of scaled Konno's density functions, and if
(2j+1) is odd, it is a superposition of
j terms of scaled Konno's density functions and a Dirac's delta function at the origin. For the two-, three-, and four-component models, the probability densities of limit distributions are explicitly calculated and their dependence on the parameters of quantum coins and on the initial qudit of walker is completely determined. Comparison with computer simulation results is also shown.