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arXiv:1907.11446 · Physical Review Letters

Experimental Investigation of Superdiffusion via Coherent Disordered Quantum Walks

Andrea Geraldi, Alessandro Laneve, L. D. Bonavena, Linda Sansoni, José Ferraz, Andrea Fratalocchi, Fabio Sciarrino, Álvaro Cuevas, Paolo Mataloni

Published Oct 1, 2019• 37 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Many disordered systems show a superdiffusive dynamics, intermediate between the diffusive one, typical of a classical stochastic process, and the so-called ballistic behavior, which is generally expected for the spreading in a quantum process. We have experimentally investigated the superdiffusive behavior of a quantum walk, whose dynamics can be related to energy transport phenomena, with a resolution which is high enough to clearly distinguish between different disorder regimes. By our experimental setup, the region between ballistic and diffusive spreading can be effectively scanned by suitably setting few degrees of freedom and without applying any decoherence to the quantum walk evolution.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.123.140501

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Many disordered systems show a superdiffusive dynamics, intermediate between the diffusive one, typical of a classical stochastic process, and the so-called ballistic behavior, which is generally expected for the spreading in a quantum process. We have experimentally investigated the superdiffusive behavior of a quantum walk, whose dynamics can be related to energy transport phenomena, with a resolution which is high enough to clearly distinguish between different disorder regimes. By our experimental setup, the region between ballistic and diffusive spreading can be effectively scanned by suitably setting few degrees of freedom and without applying any decoherence to the quantum walk evolution.
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We investigate the impact of decoherence and static disorder on the dynamics of quantum particles moving in a periodic lattice. Our experiment relies on the photonic implementation of a one-dimensional quantum walk. The pure quantum evolution is characterized by a ballistic spread of a photon's wave packet along 28 steps. By applying controlled time-dependent operations we simulate three different environmental influences on the system, resulting in a fast ballistic spread, a diffusive classical walk, and the first Anderson localization in a discrete quantum walk architecture.
The dynamical and static disordered quantum walks were extensively studied recently. It is found that, for the dynamical disorder case, the transport behavior of particles is diffusive, and for the static disorder case the transport behavior is localized. In this work, we study the effect of quantum coins on the transport behaviors of the binary disordered quantum walks. We find that once the coins satisfy certain conditions, the sub-ballistic spreading could be found in binary dynamical disorder quantum walks, and the sub-ballistic, diffusive and sub-diffusive spreadings could be found in binary static disorder quantum walks. We obtain the necessary conditions for those abnormal diffusive behaviors.
Quantum walks act in obviously different ways from their classical counterparts, but decoherence will lessen and close this gap between them. To understand this process, it is necessary to investigate the evolution of quantum walks under different decoherence situations. In this article, we study a non-Markovian decoherent quantum walk on a line. In a short time regime, the behavior of the walk deviates from both ideal quantum walks and classical random walks. The position variance as a measure of the quantum walk collapses and revives for a short time, and tends to have a linear relation with time. That is, the walker's behavior shows a diffusive spread over a long time limit, which is caused by non-Markovian dephasing affecting the quantum correlations between the quantum walker and his coin. We also study both quantum discord and measurement-induced disturbance as measures of the quantum correlations, and observe both collapse and revival in the short time regime, and the tendency to be zero in the long time limit. Therefore, quantum walks with non-Markovian decoherence tend to have diffusive spreading behavior over long time limits, while in the short time regime they oscillate between ballistic and diffusive spreading behavior, and the quantum correlation collapses and revives due to the memory effect.
A quantum walk in an ordered medium exhibits ballistic propagation. A related process is the driven quantum walk, in which the number of walkers varies along the propagation. In this work, we show that a driven quantum walk of biphoton states in an array of nonlinear waveguides does not propagate ballistically, but instead presents two transport regimes: superballistic and superdiffusive. We also study the effects of off-diagonal and diagonal disorder. In addition to the observation of Anderson localization, both types of disorder lead to the disappearance of the superballistic regime.
Quantum walks constitute important tools in different applications, especially in quantum algorithms. To a great extent their usefulness is due to unusual diffusive features, allowing much faster spreading than their classical counterparts. Such behavior, although frequently credited to intrinsic quantum interference, usually is not completely characterized. Using a recently developed Green's function approach [Phys. Rev. A 84, 042343 (2011)], we describe here---in a rather general way---the problem dynamics in terms of a true Feynman sum-over-paths history. This allows one to explicitly identify interference effects and also to explain the emergence of superdiffusivity. The present analysis has the potential to help in designing quantum walks with distinct transport properties.