Algebraic Characterizations of Unitary Linear Quantum Cellular Automata

Christoph Dürr, Huong Lê Thanh, Miklós Sántha

DAVID A. MEYER

Mattie Ji, Bowen Yang

Projective representations arise naturally in physics and representation theory, and determining whether they can be linearized has been a fundamental problem. In this work, we study the analogous problem for quantum cellular automata (QCA) representations, which incorporate locality constraints imposed by a metric space $X$. Over an arbitrary field $\mathbb{F}$, we develop an obstruction theory for the linearization of QCA representations, using the algebraic $K$-theory spectrum of QCA constructed in previous work of the authors. The resulting obstructions are governed by the homotopy type of the QCA spaces, from which we extract universal obstruction classes to linearization. In the complex algebraic and unitary case, we also fully compute the homotopy types of the QCA spaces over a point, a line, and a plane.

Michael Freedman, Matthew B. Hastings

Pablo J. Arrighi

We provide algebraic criteria for the unitarity of linear quantum cellular automata, i.e. one dimensional quantum cellular automata. We derive these both by direct combinatorial arguments, and by adding constraints into the model which do not change the quantum cellular automata's computational power. The configurations we consider have finite but unbounded size.

Gerhard Grössing, Anton Zeilinger