English

From quantum cellular automata to quantum lattice gases

Quantum Physics 2009-10-30 v2 comp-gas High Energy Physics - Theory Cellular Automata and Lattice Gases

Abstract

A natural architecture for nanoscale quantum computation is that of a quantum cellular automaton. Motivated by this observation, in this paper we begin an investigation of exactly unitary cellular automata. After proving that there can be no nontrivial, homogeneous, local, unitary, scalar cellular automaton in one dimension, we weaken the homogeneity condition and show that there are nontrivial, exactly unitary, partitioning cellular automata. We find a one parameter family of evolution rules which are best interpreted as those for a one particle quantum automaton. This model is naturally reformulated as a two component cellular automaton which we demonstrate to limit to the Dirac equation. We describe two generalizations of this automaton, the second of which, to multiple interacting particles, is the correct definition of a quantum lattice gas.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.quant-ph/9604003,
  title  = {From quantum cellular automata to quantum lattice gases},
  author = {David A. Meyer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/9604003},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

22 pages, plain TeX, 9 PostScript figures included with epsf.tex (ignore the under/overfull \vbox error messages); minor typographical corrections and journal reference added

R2 v1 2026-07-22T20:01:01.244Z