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Marquez-Martin, I., Arnault, P., Di Molfetta, G., & Perez, A. (2018). Electromagnetic lattice gauge invariance in two-dimensional discrete-time quantum walks. Phys. Rev. A, 98(3), 032333–8pp.
Abstract: Gauge invariance is one of the more important concepts in physics. We discuss this concept in connection with the unitary evolution of discrete-time quantum walks in one and two spatial dimensions, when they include the interaction with synthetic, external electromagnetic fields. One introduces this interaction as additional phases that play the role of gauge fields. Here, we present a way to incorporate those phases, which differs from previous works. Our proposal allows the discrete derivatives, that appear under a gauge transformation, to treat time and space on the same footing, in a way which is similar to standard lattice gauge theories. By considering two steps of the evolution, we define a density current which is gauge invariant and conserved. In the continuum limit, the dynamics of the particle, under a suitable choice of the parameters, becomes the Dirac equation and the conserved current satisfies the corresponding conservation equation.
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Bru, L. A., de Valcarcel, G. J., Di Molfetta, G., Perez, A., Roldan, E., & Silva, F. (2016). Quantum walk on a cylinder. Phys. Rev. A, 94(3), 032328–7pp.
Abstract: We consider the two-dimensional alternate quantum walk on a cylinder. We concentrate on the study of the motion along the open dimension, in the spirit of looking at the closed coordinate as a small or “hidden” extra dimension. If one starts from localized initial conditions on the lattice, the dynamics of the quantum walk that is obtained after tracing out the small dimension shows the contribution of several components which can be understood from the study of the dispersion relations for this problem. In fact, these components originate from the contribution of the possible values of the quasimomentum in the closed dimension. In the continuous space-time limit, the different components manifest as a set of Dirac equations, with each quasimomentum providing the value of the corresponding mass. We briefly discuss the possible link of these ideas to the simulation of high-energy physical theories that include extra dimensions. Finally, entanglement between the coin and spatial degrees of freedom is studied, showing that the entanglement entropy clearly overcomes the value reached with only one spatial dimension.
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Arnault, P., Di Molfetta, G., Brachet, M., & Debbasch, F. (2016). Quantum walks and non-Abelian discrete gauge theory. Phys. Rev. A, 94(1), 012335–6pp.
Abstract: A family of discrete-time quantum walks (DTQWs) on the line with an exact discrete U(N) gauge invariance is introduced. It is shown that the continuous limit of these DTQWs, when it exists, coincides with the dynamics of a Dirac fermion coupled to usual U(N) gauge fields in two-dimensional spacetime. A discrete generalization of the usual U(N) curvature is also constructed. An alternate interpretation of these results in terms of superimposed U(1) Maxwell fields and SU(N) gauge fields is discussed in the Appendix. Numerical simulations are also presented, which explore the convergence of the DTQWs towards their continuous limit and which also compare the DTQWs with classical (i.e., nonquantum) motions in classical SU(2) fields. The results presented in this paper constitute a first step towards quantum simulations of generic Yang-Mills gauge theories through DTQWs.
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Arrighi, P., Di Molfetta, G., Marquez-Martin, I., & Perez, A. (2019). From curved spacetime to spacetime-dependent local unitaries over the honeycomb and triangular Quantum Walks. Sci Rep, 9, 10904–10pp.
Abstract: A discrete-time Quantum Walk (QW) is an operator driving the evolution of a single particle on the lattice, through local unitaries. In a previous paper, we showed that QWs over the honeycomb and triangular lattices can be used to simulate the Dirac equation. We apply a spacetime coordinate transformation upon the lattice of this QW, and show that it is equivalent to introducing spacetime-dependent local unitaries-whilst keeping the lattice fixed. By exploiting this duality between changes in geometry, and changes in local unitaries, we show that the spacetime-dependent QW simulates the Dirac equation in (2 + 1)-dimensional curved spacetime. Interestingly, the duality crucially relies on the non linear-independence of the three preferred directions of the honeycomb and triangular lattices: The same construction would fail for the square lattice. At the practical level, this result opens the possibility to simulate field theories on curved manifolds, via the quantum walk on different kinds of lattices.
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Hatifi, M., Di Molfetta, G., Debbasch, F., & Brachet, M. (2019). Quantum walk hydrodynamics. Sci Rep, 9, 2989–7pp.
Abstract: A simple Discrete-Time Quantum Walk (DTQW) on the line is revisited and given an hydrodynamic interpretation through a novel relativistic generalization of the Madelung transform. Numerical results show that suitable initial conditions indeed produce hydrodynamical shocks and that the coherence achieved in current experiments is robust enough to simulate quantum hydrodynamical phenomena through DTQWs. An analytical computation of the asymptotic quantum shock structure is presented. The non-relativistic limit is explored in the Supplementary Material (SM).
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