English

Average mixing of continuous quantum walks

Combinatorics 2011-10-04 v3 Quantum Physics

Abstract

If XX is a graph with adjacency matrix AA, then we define H(t)H(t) to be the operator exp(itA)\exp(itA). The Schur (or entrywise) product H(t)H(t)H(t)\circ H(-t) is a doubly stochastic matrix and, because of work related to quantum computing, we are concerned the \textsl{average mixing matrix}. This can be defined as the limit of C10CH(t)H(t)\dtC^{-1} \int_0^C H(t)\circ H(-t)\dt as CC\to\infty. We establish some of the basic properties of this matrix, showing that it is positive semidefinite and that its entries are always rational. We find that for paths and cycles this matrix takes on a surprisingly simple form, thus for the path it is a linear combination of II, JJ (the all-ones matrix), and a permutation matrix.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1103.2578,
  title  = {Average mixing of continuous quantum walks},
  author = {Chris Godsil},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1103.2578},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

20 pages, minor fixes, added section on discrete walks; fixed typos

R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:38:59.328Z