English

Continuous time quantum walks in phase space

Quantum Physics 2009-11-11 v2 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We formulate continuous time quantum walks (CTQW) in a discrete quantum mechanical phase space. We define and calculate the Wigner function (WF) and its marginal distributions for CTQWs on circles of arbitrary length NN. The WF of the CTQW shows characteristic features in phase space. Revivals of the probability distributions found for continuous and for discrete quantum carpets do manifest themselves as characteristic patterns in phase space.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0509141,
  title  = {Continuous time quantum walks in phase space},
  author = {Oliver Muelken and Alexander Blumen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0509141},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

slightly revised version to be published in PRA, 6 pages, 6 color figures (high quality postscript figures are available upon request)