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Physical review. E

Extreme events of quantum walks on networks

Nisarg Vyas, M. S. Santhanam

Published Mar 13, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Extreme events are the ones for which the magnitude of the event is much larger than its typical values. They have been extensively investigated on classical dynamical and stochastic processes on networks. In this work, in analogy with well-studied extreme events of random walks, the extreme events of quantum walks on regular lattices, a scale-free network, and Erdős-Rényi network are studied. Due to unitary quantum evolution, the quantum walk dynamics usually differs from that of the classical random walks, and hence we expect extreme event properties to be different in classical and quantum settings. In contrast to this expectation, we report that extreme events of phase coherent quantum walks are qualitatively similar to that of classical random walks. We show that this counterintuitive behavior originates from the dominance of nodal fluctuations over internode correlations in disordered network structures. In particular, the occurrence probability for extreme events on scale-free and Erdős-Rényi networks displays a decaying power law with the degree of nodes. That is, the extreme event probability is larger for small degree nodes compared to the hubs on the network, in qualitative agreement with corresponding classical random walk results. Further, it is shown that extreme event probability scales with the threshold used to define extreme events.

DOI
10.1103/qc99-gh86

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Extreme events are the ones for which the magnitude of the event is much larger than its typical values. They have been extensively investigated on classical dynamical and stochastic processes on networks. In this work, in analogy with well-studied extreme events of random walks, the extreme events of quantum walks on regular lattices, a scale-free network, and Erdős-Rényi network are studied. Due to unitary quantum evolution, the quantum walk dynamics usually differs from that of the classical random walks, and hence we expect extreme event properties to be different in classical and quantum settings. In contrast to this expectation, we report that extreme events of phase coherent quantum walks are qualitatively similar to that of classical random walks. We show that this counterintuitive behavior originates from the dominance of nodal fluctuations over internode correlations in disordered network structures. In particular, the occurrence probability for extreme events on scale-free and Erdős-Rényi networks displays a decaying power law with the degree of nodes. That is, the extreme event probability is larger for small degree nodes compared to the hubs on the network, in qualitative agreement with corresponding classical random walk results. Further, it is shown that extreme event probability scales with the threshold used to define extreme events.
Due to the unitary evolution, quantum walks display different dynamical features from that of classical random walks. In contrast to this expectation, in this work, we show that extreme events can arise in unitary dynamics and its properties are qualitatively similar to that of random walks. We consider quantum walks on a ring lattice and a scale-free graph. Firstly, we obtain quantum version of flux-fluctuation relation and use this to define to extreme events on vertices of a graph as exceedences above the mean flux. The occurrence probability for extreme events on scale-free graphs displays a power-law with the degree of vertices, in qualitative agreement with corresponding classical random walk result. For both classical and quantum walks, the extreme event probability is larger for small degree nodes compared to hubs on the graph. Further, it is shown that extreme event probability scales with threshold used to define extreme events.
We study the coherent exciton transport of continuous-time quantum walks (CTQWs) on Erdos-Renyi networks. The Erdos-Renyi network of N nodes is constructed by connecting every pair of nodes with probability ppp. We numerically calculate the ensemble averaged transition probability of quantum transport between two nodes of the networks. For finite networks, we find that the limiting transition probability is reached very quickly. For infinite networks whose spectral density follows the semicircle law, the efficiencies of the classical and quantum-mechanical transport are compared on networks of different average degree. In the long time limiting, we consider the distribution of the ensemble averaged transition probabilities, and show that there is a high probability to find the exciton at the initial node. Such high return probability almost do not alter in a wide range of connection probability p but increases rapidly when the network approaches to be fully connected. For networks whose topology is not extremely connected, the return probability is inversely proportional to the network size N. Furthermore, the transport dynamics are compared with that on a random graph model in which the degree of each node equals to the average degree of the Erdos-Renyi networks.
Abstract Understanding how decoherence disrupts quantum walks is vital for developing robust quantum technologies, as environmental interactions often degrade quantum properties or induce transitions to classical random walks. We investigate the stability of continuous-time quantum walks across different network topologies subjected to three distinct decoherence mechanisms: energy-based intrinsic decoherence, node-based Haken–Strobl noise, and edge-based quantum stochastic walk. By defining stability as the preservation of quantum properties, we find that densely connected networks, such as the complete network, and hub dominated networks, such as scale-free and star topologies, are stable under Haken–Strobl noise but become uniquely vulnerable under quantum stochastic walk. However, these same networks exhibit lower coherence in the noiseless regime due to their inherent localization, highlighting a fundamental trade-off between localization and coherence. Furthermore, the centrality of the initialization node has a pronounced impact on relaxation time, underscoring the critical role of local topological features in quantum dynamics.
For classical random walks on networks, the flux-fluctuation relation is an important characteristic that relates the mean flux and strength of fluctuations on the nodes. It was extensively studied before, although equivalent relations for quantum walks on networks remain unknown. In this work, a quantum version of the flux-fluctuation relation is obtained. It is valid for quantum walks on an arbitrary network, subject to the condition that the spectrum of the unitary walk operator is nondegenerate. Remarkably, for phase coherent quantum walks, the quantum flux-fluctuation relation is qualitatively similar to its classical counterpart, and quantum effects are insignificant. We numerically simulate quantum walks on periodic lattices and scale-free and Erdős-Rényi networks, and the results are consistent with the analytical quantum flux-fluctuation relation. We discuss the implications for the quantum walk dynamics if the spectrum of the unitary walk operator violate the nondegeneracy condition.
Rogue waves are rapid and unpredictable events of exceptional amplitude reported in various fields, such as oceanography and optics, with much of the interest being targeted towards their physical origins and likelihood of occurrence. Here, we use the all-round framework of discrete-time quantum walks to study the onset of those events due to a random phase modulation, unveiling its long-tailed statistics, survival time, and dependence upon the degree of randomness. We find the minimal disorder strength allowing for their occurrence to scale $\ensuremath{\propto}{N}^{\ensuremath{-}1/2}, N$ being the number of sites. Moreover, an extreme-value analysis converges to the Gumbel class of limiting distributions.
Abstract Quantum biology seeks to explain biological phenomena via quantum mechanisms, such as enzyme reaction rates via tunneling and photosynthesis energy efficiency via coherent superposition of states. However, less effort has been devoted to study the role of quantum mechanisms in biological evolution. In this paper, we used transcription factor networks with two and four different phenotypes, and used classical random walks (CRW) and quantum walks (QW) to compare network search behavior and efficiency at finding novel phenotypes between CRW and QW. In the network with two phenotypes, at temporal scales comparable to decoherence time T D , QW are as efficient as CRW at finding new phenotypes. In the case of the network with four phenotypes, the QW had a higher probability of mutating to a novel phenotype than the CRW, regardless of the number of mutational steps (i.e., 1, 2 or 3) away from the new phenotype. Before quantum decoherence, the QW probabilities become higher turning the QW effectively more efficient than CRW at finding novel phenotypes under different starting conditions. Thus, our results warrant further exploration of the QW under more realistic network scenarios (i.e., larger genotype networks) in both closed and open systems (e.g., by considering Lindblad terms).