It has been proved by Kempe that discrete quantum walks on the hypercube (HC) hit exponentially faster than the classical analog. The same was also observed numerically by Krovi and Brun for a slightly different property, namely, the expected hitting time. Yet, to what extent this striking result survives in more general graphs is to date an open question. Here, we tackle this question by studying the expected hitting time for quantum walks on HCs that are embedded into larger symmetric structures. By performing numerical simulations of the discrete quantum walk and deriving a general expression for the classical hitting time, we observe an exponentially increasing gap between the expected classical and quantum hitting times, not only for walks on the bare HC, but also for a large family of embedded HCs. This suggests that the quantum speedup is stable with respect to such embeddings.
The expected hitting time of discrete quantum walks on a hypercube (HC) is numerically known to be exponentially shorter than that of their classical analogs in terms of the scaling with the HC dimension. Recent numerical analyses illustrated that this scaling exists not only on the bare HC, but also when the HC graph is symmetrically and locally embedded into larger graphs. The present work investigates the necessity of symmetry and locality for the speed-up by considering embeddings that are nonsymmetric or nonlocal. We provide numerical evidence that the exponential speed-up survives also in these cases. Furthermore, our numerical simulations demonstrate that removing a single edge from the HC also does not destroy the exponential speed-up. In the nonlocal embedding of the HC we encounter dark states, which we analyze. We provide a general and detailed presentation of the mapping that reduces the exponentially large Hilbert space of the quantum walk to an effective subspace of polynomial scaling. This mapping is our essential tool to numerically study quantum walks in such high-dimensional structures.
Hitting times for discrete quantum walks on graphs give an average time before the walk reaches an ending condition. To be analogous to the hitting time for a classical walk, the quantum hitting time must involve repeated measurements as well as unitary evolution. We derive an expression for hitting time using superoperators, and numerically evaluate it for the discrete walk on the hypercube. The values found are compared to other analogs of hitting time suggested in earlier work. The dependence of hitting times on the type of unitary ``coin'' is examined, and we give an example of an initial state and coin which gives an infinite hitting time for a quantum walk. Such infinite hitting times require destructive interference, and are not observed classically. Finally, we look at distortions of the hypercube, and observe that a loss of symmetry in the hypercube increases the hitting time. Symmetry seems to play an important role in both dramatic speed-ups and slow-downs of quantum walks.
We demonstrate an implementation of the hitting time of a discrete time quantum random walk on cubelike graphs using IBM's Qiskit platform. Our implementation is based on efficient circuits for the Grover and Shift operators. We verify the results about the one-shot hitting time of quantum walks on a hypercube as proved in [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00440-004-0423-2]. We extend the study to another family of cubelike graphs called the augmented cubes [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/net.10033]. Based on our numerical study, we conjecture that for all families of cubelike graphs there is a linear relationship between the degree of a cubelike graph and its hitting time which holds asymptotically. That is, for any cubelike graph of degree
Δ, the probability of finding the quantum random walk at the target node at time
2πΔ approaches 1 as the degree
Δ of the cubelike graph approaches infinity.
We study the one-shot and concurrent hitting for the discrete-time Grover-coined quantum walk on cubelike graphs
G=Cay(Z2d,Ω) of degree
Δ=∣Ω∣. Starting from the vertex labeled
0, we identify
σ=⨁ω∈Ωω as a natural target vertex; for the hypercube,
σ is precisely the antipodal vertex.
For families with
Δ→∞, let
T be an integer having the same parity as
Δ and satisfying $ \left|T-\frac{πΔ}{2}\right|\leq 1. $ We show that the probability
pT(σ) of finding the walker at
σ when it is measured at time
T satisfies
pT(σ)=1−O(Δ−1/5). Thus the target is found with probability tending to one after
Θ(Δ) steps.
For the concurrently measured walk, let
HTConc(σ) denote the probability that the target is detected at or before time
T when it is tested after every step. We prove
pT(σ)≤THTConc(σ), which implies
HTConc(σ)=Ω(Δ−1) over the same time scale.
The proof uses the Walsh-Fourier decomposition, an exact two-dimensional reduction of each Fourier mode, and a universal second-moment identity for the associated character sums. Our results extend Kempe's hypercube hitting phenomenon (J. Kempe, Probab. Theory Relat. Fields 133, 215-235, 2005) to arbitrary cubelike generating sets and establish the conjectured asymptotic hitting behavior for cublelike and augmented cubes in Mulherkar, Rajdeepak and Sunitha (Int. J. Quantum Inf. 20,2250020, 2022)
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. 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 phenomenon of infinite hitting times is in general a consequence of the symmetry of the graph and its automorphism group.
Symmetries of a graph, given by its automorphism group, can be inherited by the evolution operator. Using the irreducible representations of the automorphism group, we derive conditions such that quantum walks defined on this graph must have infinite hitting times for some initial states. Symmetry can cause the walk to also be confined to a subspace of the original Hilbert space for cartain initial states. We show that a quantum walk confined to the subspace corresponding to this symmetry group can be seen as a different quantum walk on a smaller quotient graph. We give an explicit construction of the quotient graph for any subgroup H of the automorphism group. The automorphisms of the quotient graph which are inherited from the original graph are the original automorphism group modulo the subgroup H used to construct it. We conjecture that the existence of a small quotient graph with finite hitting times is necessary for a walk to exhibit a quantum speed-up. Finally, we use symmetry and the theory of decoherence-free subspaces to determine when the subspace of the quotient graph is a decoherence-free subspace of the dynamics.