English

Implementing Parrondo's paradox with two coin quantum walks

Quantum Physics 2018-02-15 v3 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Computational Complexity

Abstract

Parrondo's paradox is ubiquitous in games, ratchets and random walks.The apparent paradox, devised by J.~M.~R.~Parrondo, that two losing games AA and BB can produce an winning outcome has been adapted in many physical and biological systems to explain their working. However, proposals on demonstrating Parrondo's paradox using quantum walks failed {for large number of steps}. In this work, we show that instead of a single coin if we consider a two coin initial state which may or may not be entangled, we can observe a genuine Parrondo's paradox with quantum walks. Further we focus on reasons for this and pin down the asymmetry in initial two-coin state or asymmetry in shift operator, either of which are necessary for observing a genuine Parrondo's paradox. We extend our work to a 3-coin initial state too with similar results. The implications of our work for observing quantum ratchet like behavior using quantum walks is also discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1702.05927,
  title  = {Implementing Parrondo's paradox with two coin quantum walks},
  author = {Jishnu Rajendran and Colin Benjamin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.05927},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

9 pages, 7 Figures, accepted for publication in Royal Society Open Science

R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:22:50.952Z