Following Konno [1], it is natural to ask: What is the Ito’s formula for the discrete time quantum walk on a graph different than Z, the set of integers? In this paper we answer the question for the discrete time quantum walk on Z2, the square lattice.
An explicit formula of the Hamiltonians generating one-dimensional discrete-time quantum walks is given. The formula is deduced by using the algebraic structure introduced before. The square of the Hamiltonian turns out to be an operator without, essentially, the ``coin register,'' and hence it can be compared with the one-dimensional continuous-time quantum walk. It is shown that, under a limit with respect to a parameter, which expresses the magnitude of the diagonal components of the unitary matrix defining the discrete-time quantum walks, the one-dimensional continuous-time quantum walk is obtained from operators defined through the Hamiltonians of the one-dimensional discrete-time quantum walks. Thus, this result can be regarded, in one-dimension, as a partial answer to a problem proposed by Ambainis.
I obtain the dynamics of the continuous time quantum walk on a d-dimensional lattice, with periodic boundary conditions, as an appropriate limit of the dynamics of the discrete time quantum walk on the same lattice. This extends the main result of [8] which proved this limit for the case of the quantum walk on the infinite line and the quantum cellular automaton proposed in [1]. By highlighting the main features of the limiting procedure, I then extend it to general graphs. For a given discrete time quantum walk on a general graph, I single out the type of continuous dynamics (Hamiltonians) that can be obtained as a limit of the discrete time dynamics. 1 Generalities on quantum walks; continuous and discrete time Consider a graph G: = {V, E} with a set of vertices V of cardinality N and a set of edges E. We assume G to be undirected and without self-loops. In the interval of time ∆t a certain fraction γ∆t of a quantity pj leaves the location of the j-th vertex to move to a neighboring vertex k. The quantity pj, j = 1,..., N, at time t + ∆t is given by 1 pj(t + ∆t) = pj(t) − deg (j)γ∆tpj(t) + ∑ (k,j)∈E γ∆tpk(t). (1) Define ⃗p the N−vector whose components are the pj’s quantities, and L the Laplacian matrix defined by Ljj = − deg (j), Ljk = 1 if (j, k) ∈ E and Ljk = 0 otherwise. L is
We undertake a detailed analysis of ergodicity for homogeneous discrete-time quantum walks on the integer lattice. The most significant result of our paper holds in dimension one, and gives a complete equivalence between the absolutely continuous spectrum of the unitary operator encoding the walk, and the equidistribution of its dynamics in position space, which appears for the first time in the context of large-volume quantum ergodicity. In higher dimensions, we give a criterion for full and partial ergodicity in terms of a finer property of the spectrum which we dub ``No Repeating Graphs'', and we distinguish how strongly the equidistribution is taking place (weak convergence vs total variation). Many examples are included to illustrate the criterion and to distinguish between the types of ergodicity.