There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

All our former experience with application of quantum theory seems to say:
{\it what is predicted by quantum formalism must occur in laboratory} But the
essence of quantum formalism - entanglement, recognized by Einstein, Podolsky,
Rosen and Schr\"odinger - waited over 70 years to enter to laboratories as a
new resource as real as energy This holistic property of compound quantum systems, which involves
nonclassical correlations between subsystems, is a potential for many quantum
processes, including ``canonical'' ones: quantum cryptography, quantum
teleportation and dense coding However, it appeared that this new resource is
very complex and difficult to detect Being usually fragile to environment, it
is robust against conceptual and mathematical tools, the task of which is to
decipher its rich structure This article reviews basic aspects of entanglement including its
characterization, detection, distillation and quantifying In particular, the
authors discuss various manifestations of entanglement via Bell inequalities,
entropic inequalities, entanglement witnesses, quantum cryptography and point
out some interrelations They also discuss a basic role of entanglement in
quantum communication within distant labs paradigm and stress some
peculiarities such as irreversibility of entanglement manipulations including
its extremal form - bound entanglement phenomenon A basic role of entanglement
witnesses in detection of entanglement is emphasized

Quantum entanglement

Recent interest in aspects common to quantum information and condensed matter has prompted a flurry of activity at the border of these disciplines that were far distant until a few years ago. Numerous interesting questions have been addressed so far. Here an important part of this field, the properties of the entanglement in many-body systems, are reviewed. The zero and finite temperature properties of entanglement in interacting spin, fermion, and boson model systems are discussed. Both bipartite and multipartite entanglement will be considered. In equilibrium entanglement is shown tightly connected to the characteristics of the phase diagram. The behavior of entanglement can be related, via certain witnesses, to thermodynamic quantities thus offering interesting possibilities for an experimental test. Out of equilibrium entangled states are generated and manipulated by means of many-body Hamiltonians.

/pdf/entanglement-in-many-body-systems-sqpatuxt14.pdf

Entanglement in many-body systems

This article aims to provide an introductory survey on quantum random walks. Starting from a physical effect to illustrate the main ideas we will introduce quantum random walks, review some of their properties and outline their striking differences to classical walks. We will touch upon both physical effects and computer science applications, introducing some of the main concepts and language of present day quantum information science in this context. We will mention recent developments in this new area and outline some open questions.

Quantum random walks: an introductory overview

Classical phase transitions occur when a physical system reaches a state below a critical temperature characterized by macroscopic order. Quantum phase transitions occur at absolute zero; they are induced by the change of an external parameter or coupling constant, and are driven by quantum fluctuations. Examples include transitions in quantum Hall systems, localization in Si-MOSFETs (metal oxide silicon field-effect transistors; ref. 4) and the superconductor-insulator transition in two-dimensional systems. Both classical and quantum critical points are governed by a diverging correlation length, although quantum systems possess additional correlations that do not have a classical counterpart. This phenomenon, known as entanglement, is the resource that enables quantum computation and communication. The role of entanglement at a phase transition is not captured by statistical mechanics-a complete classification of the critical many-body state requires the introduction of concepts from quantum information theory. Here we connect the theory of critical phenomena with quantum information by exploring the entangling resources of a system close to its quantum critical point. We demonstrate, for a class of one-dimensional magnetic systems, that entanglement shows scaling behaviour in the vicinity of the transition point.

/pdf/scaling-of-entanglement-close-to-a-quantum-phase-transition-1qxejmj3mt.pdf

Scaling of entanglement close to a quantum phase transition

A proof that continuous-time quantum walks are universal for quantum computation, using unweighted graphs of low degree, has recently been presented by A. M. Childs [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 180501 (2009)]. We present a version based instead on the discrete-time quantum walk. We show that the discrete-time quantum walk is able to implement the same universal gate set and thus both discrete and continuous-time quantum walks are computational primitives. Additionally, we give a set of components on which the discrete-time quantum walk provides perfect state transfer.

Universal quantum computation using the discrete-time quantum walk

The development of quantum walks in the context of quantum computation, as generalisations of random walk techniques, has led rapidly to several new quantum algorithms. These all follow a unitary quantum evolution, apart from the final measurement. Since logical qubits in a quantum computer must be protected from decoherence by error correction, there is no need to consider decoherence at the level of algorithms. Nonetheless, enlarging the range of quantum dynamics to include non-unitary evolution provides a wider range of possibilities for tuning the properties of quantum walks. For example, small amounts of decoherence in a quantum walk on the line can produce more uniform spreading (a top-hat distribution), without losing the quantum speed up. This paper reviews the work on decoherence, and more generally on non-unitary evolution, in quantum walks and suggests what future questions might prove interesting to pursue in this area.

/pdf/decoherence-in-quantum-walks-a-review-zb82q0xm79.pdf

Decoherence in quantum walks – a review

We investigate the entanglement arising naturally in a one-dimensional Ising chain in a magnetic field in an arbitrary direction We find that for different temperatures, different orientations of the magnetic field give maximum entanglement In the high-temperature limit, this optimal orientation corresponds to the magnetic field being perpendicular to the Ising orientation $(z$ direction) In the low-temperature limit, we find that varying the angle of the magnetic field very slightly from the z direction leads to a rapid rise in entanglement We also find that the orientation of the magnetic field for maximum entanglement varies with the field amplitude Furthermore, we have derived a simple rule for the mixing of concurrences (a measure of entanglement) due to the mixing of pure states satisfying certain conditions

Thermal concurrence mixing in a one-dimensional Ising model

We propose an experimental realization of discrete quantum walks using neutral atoms trapped in optical lattices The quantum walk is taking place in position space and experimental implementation with present-day technology---even using existing setups---seems feasible We analyze the influence of possible imperfections in the experiment and investigate the transition from a quantum walk to the classical random walk for increasing errors and decoherence

https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0207137.pdf

Quantum walks in optical lattices

In discrete time, coined quantum walks, the coin degrees of freedom offer the potential for a wider range of controls over the evolution of the walk than are available in the continuous time quantum walk. This paper explores some of the possibilities on regular graphs, and also reports periodic behaviour on small cyclic graphs.

Viv Kendon

Papers

Universal quantum computation using the discrete-time quantum walk

Decoherence in quantum walks – a review

Thermal concurrence mixing in a one-dimensional Ising model

Quantum walks in optical lattices

Controlling discrete quantum walks: coins and intitial states