Elfs, trees and quantum walks - Stephen Piddock | TQC 2023
Channel: Squid: Schools for Quantum Information Development
Date: 2023-08-23

Stephen Piddock 
Elfs, trees and quantum walks

https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.16379
We study an elementary Markov process on graphs based on electric flow sampling (elfs). The elfs process repeatedly samples from an electric flow on a graph. While the sinks of the flow are fixed, the source is updated using the electric flow sample, and the process ends when it hits a sink vertex.
We argue that this process naturally connects to many key quantities of interest. E.g., we describe a random walk coupling which implies that the elfs process has the same arrival distribution as a random walk. We also analyze the electric hitting time, which is the expected time before the process hits a sink vertex. As our main technical contribution, we show that the electric hitting time on trees is logarithmic in the graph size and weights.
The initial motivation behind the elfs process is that quantum walks can sample from electric flows, and they can hence implement this process very naturally. This yields a quantum walk algorithm for sampling from the random walk arrival distribution, which has widespread applications. It complements the existing line of quantum walk search algorithms which only return an element from the sink, but yield no insight in the distribution of the returned element. By our bound on the electric hitting time on trees, the quantum walk algorithm on trees requires quadratically fewer steps than the random walk hitting time, up to polylog factors.

July 25, 2023
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TQC 2023 | 24-28 July 2023, University of Aveiro, Portugal
http://tqc-conference.org

18th Conference on the  Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptography.

TQC is a leading annual international conference for students and researchers working in the theoretical aspects of quantum information science. The scientific objective is to bring together the theoretical quantum information science community to present and discuss the latest advances in the field.


Organisation:
Squids - Schools for Quantum Information Development  
Universidade de Aveiro: Departamento de Matemática, CIDMA & Fábrica


Sponsors:
Phasecraft, UK
Google Quantum AI, USA
QuSoft, The Netherlands
Quantum for Life Centre, Denmark
Technology Innovation Institute, UAE
ML4Q, Germany
Dulwich Quantum