We study the localization properties, energy spectra, and coin-position entanglement of the aperiodic discrete-time quantum walks. The aperiodicity is described by spatially dependent quantum coins distributed on the lattice, whose distribution is neither periodic (Bloch-like) nor random (Anderson-like). Within transport properties we identified delocalized and localized quantum walks mediated by a proper adjusting of aperiodic parameter. Both scenarios are studied by exploring typical quantities (inverse participation ratio, survival probability, and wave packet width), as well as the energy spectra of an associated effective Hamiltonian. By using the energy spectra analysis, we show that the early stage the inhomogeneity leads to a vanishing gap between two main bands, which justifies the predominantly delocalized character observed for ν<0.5. With increase of ν arise gaps and flat bands on the energy spectra, which corroborates the suppression of transport detected for ν>0.5. For ν high enough, we observe an energy spectra, which resembles that described by the one-dimensional Anderson model. Within coin-position entanglement, we show many settings in which an enhancement in the ability to entangle is observed. This behavior brings new information about the role played by aperiodicity on the coin-position entanglement for static inhomogeneous systems, reported before as almost always reducing the entanglement when comparing with the homogeneous case. We extend the analysis in order to show that systems with static inhomogeneity are able to exhibit asymptotic limit of entanglement.
We study the localization properties, energy spectra, and coin-position entanglement of the aperiodic discrete-time quantum walks. The aperiodicity is described by spatially dependent quantum coins distributed on the lattice, whose distribution is neither periodic (Bloch-like) nor random (Anderson-like). Within transport properties we identified delocalized and localized quantum walks mediated by a proper adjusting of aperiodic parameter. Both scenarios are studied by exploring typical quantities (inverse participation ratio, survival probability, and wave packet width), as well as the energy spectra of an associated effective Hamiltonian. By using the energy spectra analysis, we show that the early stage the inhomogeneity leads to a vanishing gap between two main bands, which justifies the predominantly delocalized character observed for ν<0.5. With increase of ν arise gaps and flat bands on the energy spectra, which corroborates the suppression of transport detected for ν>0.5. For ν high enough, we observe an energy spectra, which resembles that described by the one-dimensional Anderson model. Within coin-position entanglement, we show many settings in which an enhancement in the ability to entangle is observed. This behavior brings new information about the role played by aperiodicity on the coin-position entanglement for static inhomogeneous systems, reported before as almost always reducing the entanglement when comparing with the homogeneous case. We extend the analysis in order to show that systems with static inhomogeneity are able to exhibit asymptotic limit of entanglement.
We investigate the role of different aperiodic sequences in the dynamics of single quantum particles in discrete space and time. For this we consider three aperiodic sequences, namely, the Fibonacci, Thue-Morse, and Rudin-Shapiro sequences, as examples of tilings the diffraction spectra of which have pure point, singular continuous, and absolutely continuous support, respectively. Our interest is to understand how the order, intrinsically introduced by the deterministic rule used to generate the aperiodic sequences, is reflected in the dynamical properties of the quantum system. For this system we consider a single particle undergoing a discrete-time quantum walk (DTQW), where the aperiodic sequences are used to distribute the coin operations at different lattice positions (inhomogeneous DTQW) or by applying the same coin operation at all lattice sites at a given time but choosing different coin operation at each time step according to the chosen aperiodic sequence (time dependent DTQW). We study the energy spectra and the spreading of an initially localized wave packet for different cases, finding that in the case of Fibonacci and Thue-Morse tilings the system is superdiffusive, whereas in the Rudin-Shapiro case it is strongly subdiffusive. Trying to understand this behavior in terms of the energy spectra, we look at the survival amplitude as a function of time. By means of the echo we present strong evidence that, although the three orderings are very different as evidenced by their diffraction spectra, the energy spectra are all singular continuous except for the inhomogeneous DTQW with the Rudin-Shapiro sequence where it is discrete. This is in agreement with the observed strong localization both in real space and in the Hilbert space. Our paper is particularly interesting because quantum walks can be engineered in laboratories by means of ultracold gases or in optical waveguides, and therefore would be a perfect playground to study singular continuous energy spectra in a completely controlled quantum setup.
Properties of one-dimensional discrete-time quantum walks (DTQWs) are sensitive to the presence of inhomogeneities in the substrate, which can be generated by defining position-dependent coin operators. Deterministic aperiodic sequences of two or more symbols provide ideal environments where these properties can be explored in a controlled way. Based on an exhaustive numerical study, this work discusses a two-coin model resulting from the construction rules that lead to the usual fractal Cantor set. Although the fraction of the less frequent coin [Formula: see text] as the size of the chain is increased, it leaves peculiar properties in the walker dynamics. They are characterized by the wave function, from which results for the probability distribution and its variance, as well as the entanglement entropy, were obtained. A number of results for different choices of the two coins are presented. The entanglement entropy has shown to be very sensitive to uncovering subtle quantum effects present in the model.
In this work, we extend the scattering quantum walk (SQW) framework to a lattice of energy-dependent point interactions. This yields, within the coined quantum walk (CQW) formalism, a coin operator that is directly related to the scattering matrix of zero-range potentials. The model thus provides a discrete-time quantum-walk (DTQW) analog of a periodic array of point interactions of the Kronig-Penney type, where the walker's wavenumber serves as a continuous, physically transparent control parameter for the coin operation. We analyze the spectra and the dynamics of position probability and entanglement, yielding distinct results for specific energies and point interactions. We relate the spectral structure to the spatial probability distribution and explicitly characterize the long-time entanglement behavior for each point interaction. The transmission modulus determines the quasienergy gap, bandwidth, and maximum group velocity, while also controlling the long-time coin-position entanglement for the initial state considered. The four families of one-dimensional point interactions (δ, δ′, crossed and asymmetric) realize qualitatively distinct transmission profiles and span the full range of behavior, including enhanced or strongly suppressed spreading and oscillatory entanglement.
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.
We analyze a set of discrete-time quantum walks for which the displacements on a chain follow binary aperiodic jumps according to three paradigmatic sequences: Fibonacci, Thue-Morse, and Rudin-Shapiro. We use a generalized Hadamard coin, C[over ̂]_{H}, as well as a generalized Fourier coin, C[over ̂]_{K}. We verify the QW experiences a slowdown of the wave packet spreading, σ^{2}(t)∼t^{α}, by the aperiodic jumps whose exponent, α, depends on the type of aperiodicity. Additional aperiodicity-induced effects also emerge, namely, (1) while the superdiffusive regime (1<α<2) is predominant, α displays an unusual sensibility with the type of coin operator where the more pronounced differences emerge for the Rudin-Shapiro and random protocols and (2) even though the angle θ of the coin operator is homogeneous in space and time, there is a nonmonotonic dependence of α with θ. Fingerprints of the aperiodicity in the hoppings are also found when distributional measures such as the Shannon and von Neumann entropies, the Inverse Participation Ratio, the Jensen-Shannon dissimilarity, and the kurtosis are computed, which allow assessing informational and delocalization features arising from these protocols and understanding the impact of linear and nonlinear correlations of the jump sequence in a quantum walk as well. Finally, we argue the spin-lattice entanglement is enhanced by aperiodic jumps.
We investigate the evolution dynamics of inhomogeneous discrete-time one-dimensional quantum walks displaying long-range correlations in both space and time. The associated quantum coin operators of internal states are built to exhibit random inhomogeneity distribution of long-range correlations embedded in the time evolution protocol through a fractional Brownian motion with spectrum following a power-law behavior, S(k)∼1/k^{ν}. From extensive numerical simulations with averages over a large number of independent realizations of the phases of quantum coins, the power-law correlated disorder encoded in the coin phases is shown to give rise to a wide variety of spreading patterns of the qubit states, from localized to subdiffusive, diffusive, and superdiffusive (including ballistic) behavior, depending on the relative strength of the parameters driving the correlation degree. Dispersion control is possible in one-dimensional discrete-time quantum walks by tuning the long-range correlation properties assigned to the inhomogeneous quantum coin operator.