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arXiv:1411.7691 · Physical Review B

Localization, delocalization, and topological transitions in disordered two-dimensional quantum walks

Jonathan M. Edge, János K. Asbóth

Published Mar 5, 2015• 35 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate time-independent disorder on several two-dimensional discrete-time quantum walks. We find numerically that, contrary to claims in the literature, random onsite phase disorder, spin-dependent or otherwise, cannot localize the Hadamard quantum walk; rather, it induces diffusive spreading of the walker. In contrast, split-step quantum walks are generically localized by phase disorder. We explain this difference by showing that the Hadamard walk is a special case of the split-step quantum walk, with parameters tuned to a critical point at a topological phase transition. We show that the topological phase transition can also be reached by introducing strong disorder in the rotation angles. We determine the critical exponent for the divergence of the localization length at the topological phase transition, and find $\ensuremath{\nu}=2.6$, in both cases. This places the two-dimensional split-step quantum walk in the universality class of the quantum Hall effect.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.91.104202

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Scientific Reports•Sep 14, 2017•39 citations
We investigate time-independent disorder on several two-dimensional discrete-time quantum walks. We find numerically that, contrary to claims in the literature, random onsite phase disorder, spin-dependent or otherwise, cannot localize the Hadamard quantum walk; rather, it induces diffusive spreading of the walker. In contrast, split-step quantum walks are generically localized by phase disorder. We explain this difference by showing that the Hadamard walk is a special case of the split-step quantum walk, with parameters tuned to a critical point at a topological phase transition. We show that the topological phase transition can also be reached by introducing strong disorder in the rotation angles. We determine the critical exponent for the divergence of the localization length at the topological phase transition, and find \ensuremathν=2.6\ensuremath{\nu}=2.6\ensuremathν=2.6, in both cases. This places the two-dimensional split-step quantum walk in the universality class of the quantum Hall effect.
We investigate numerically and theoretically the effect of spatial disorder on two-dimensional split-step discrete-time quantum walks with two internal ``coin'' states. Spatial disorder can lead to Anderson localization, inhibiting the spread of quantum walks, putting them at a disadvantage against their diffusively spreading classical counterparts. We find that spatial disorder of the most general type, i.e., position-dependent Haar random coin operators, does not lead to Anderson localization but to a diffusive spread instead. This is a delocalization, which happens because disorder places the quantum walk to a critical point between different anomalous Floquet-Anderson insulating topological phases. We base this explanation on the relationship of this general quantum walk to a simpler case more studied in the literature and for which disorder-induced delocalization of a topological origin has been observed. We review topological delocalization for the simpler quantum walk, using time evolution of the wave functions and level spacing statistics. We apply scattering theory to two-dimensional quantum walks and thus calculate the topological invariants of disordered quantum walks, substantiating the topological interpretation of the delocalization and finding signatures of the delocalization in the finite-size scaling of transmission. We show criticality of the Haar random quantum walk by calculating the critical exponent $\ensuremath{\eta}$ in three different ways and find $\ensuremath{\eta}\ensuremath{\approx}0.52$ as in the integer quantum Hall effect. Our results showcase how theoretical ideas and numerical tools from solid-state physics can help us understand spatially random quantum walks.
Quantum walks are promising for information processing tasks because in regular graphs they spread quadratically more rapidly than random walks. Static disorder, however, can turn the tables: unlike random walks, quantum walks can suffer Anderson localization, with their wave function staying within a finite region even in the infinite time limit, with a probability exponentially close to 1. It is thus important to understand when a quantum walk will be Anderson localized and when we can expect it to spread to infinity even in the presence of disorder. In this work we analyze the response of a one-dimensional quantum walk---the split-step walk---to different forms of static disorder. We find that introducing static, symmetry-preserving disorder in the parameters of the walk leads to Anderson localization. In the completely disordered limit, however, a delocalization transition occurs, and the walk spreads subdiffusively to infinity. Using an efficient numerical algorithm, we calculate the bulk topological invariants of the disordered walk and find that the disorder-induced Anderson localization and delocalization transitions are governed by the topological phases of the quantum walk.
We study the dynamical localization of discrete time evolution of topological split-step quantum random walk (QRW) on a single-site defect starting from a uniform distribution. Using analytical and numerical calculations, we determine the high localization probability regions in the parameter space of the quantum walker. These regions contain two or more pairs of trapped states, forming near a lattice defect. By investigating the spectral properties of the discrete-time evolution operators, we show that these trapped states have large overlap with the initial uniformly distributed state, thus offering a simple interpretation of the localization effect. As this localization scheme could be interpreted as a variation of spatial quantum search algorithm, we compare the localization probability and time with other types of two-dimensional quantum walks that do not have topological phases and realize localization time scaling similar to Grover's algorithm. Finally we show that mechanism of localization we identified is robust against the influence of disorder.
The interplay between disorder and topology triggers interesting effects for the propagation of quantum particles in low-dimensional network structures. For instance, the occurrence of Anderson localization, a commonly observed effect in a quantum network with static disorder, can be suppressed by introducing topology-a phenomenon dubbed as topological Anderson localization transition [1] . In one-dimensional systems, for example, disorder induces localization on a short length scale while topology counters that through long-range correlations, yielding divergent correlation length and extremely slow spreading at quantum criticality. However, its experimental demonstration still remains an outstanding challenge as that would require, in contrast to Anderson localization transition, addi¬tional control over internal degrees of freedom, which is hard to implement, for instance, in cold-atom systems [2] . Quantum walks (QWs), a quantum analog of random walks, comprising quantum coin toss and conditioned step operations are already established for studying quantum transport phenomena, such as, disorder and topology [5] . Based on our theoretical proposal [3] , here, we provide an experimental route using time-multiplexed quantum walk [4] for evidencing the targeted phenomenon.
We study a spin-1/2-particle moving on a one-dimensional lattice subject to disorder induced by a random, space-dependent quantum coin. The discrete time evolution is given by a family of random unitary quantum walk operators, where the shift operation is assumed to be deterministic. Each coin is an independent identically distributed random variable with values in the group of two-dimensional unitary matrices. We derive sufficient conditions on the probability distribution of the coins such that the system exhibits dynamical localization. Put differently, the tunneling probability between two lattice sites decays rapidly for almost all choices of random coins and after arbitrary many time steps with increasing distance. Our findings imply that this effect takes place if the coin is chosen at random from the Haar measure, or some measure continuous with respect to it, but also for a class of discrete probability measures which support consists of two coins, one of them being the Hadamard coin.
Quantum Walk (QW) has very different transport properties to its classical counterpart due to interference effects. Here we study the discrete-time quantum walk (DTQW) with on-site static/dynamic phase disorder following either binary or uniform distribution in both one and two dimensions. For one dimension, we consider the Hadamard coin; for two dimensions, we consider either a 2-level Hadamard coin (Hadamard walk) or a 4-level Grover coin (Grover walk) for the rotation in coin-space. We study the transport properties e.g. inverse participation ratio (IPR) and the standard deviation of the density function (σ) as well as the coin-position entanglement entropy (EE), due to the two types of phase disorders and the two types of coins. Our numerical simulations show that the dimensionality, the type of coins, and whether the disorder is static or dynamic play a pivotal role and lead to interesting behaviors of the DTQW. The distribution of the phase disorder has very minor effects on the quantum walk.