A new model of quantum random walks is introduced, on lattices as well as on finite graphs. These quantum random walks take into account the behavior of open quantum systems. They are the exact quantum analogues of classical Markov chains. We explore the quantum trajectory point of view on these quantum random walks, that is, we show that measuring the position of the particle after each time- step gives rise to a classical Markov chain, on the lattice times the state space of the particle. This quantum trajectory is a simulation of the master equation of the quantum random walk. The physical pertinence of such quantum random walks and the way they can be concretely realized is discussed. Differences and connections with the already well-known quantum random walks, such as the Hadamard random walk, are established.
We study a particular class of complex-valued random variables and their associated random walks: the complex obtuse random variables. They are the generalization to the complex case of the real-valued obtuse random variables which were introduced in cite{A-E} in order to understand the structure of normal martingales in $RR^n$.The extension to the complex case is mainly motivated by considerations from Quantum Statistical Mechanics, in particular for the seek of a characterization of those quantum baths acting as classical noises. The extension of obtuse random variables to the complex case is far from obvious and hides very interesting algebraical structures. We show that complex obtuse random variables are characterized by a 3-tensor which admits certain symmetries which we show to be the exact 3-tensor analogue of the normal character for 2-tensors (i.e. matrices), that is, a necessary and sufficient condition for being diagonalizable in some orthonormal basis. We discuss the passage to the continuous-time limit for these random walks and show that they converge in distribution to normal martingales in $CC^N$. We show that the 3-tensor associated to these normal martingales encodes their behavior, in particular the diagonalization directions of the 3-tensor indicate the directions of the space where the martingale behaves like a diffusion and those where it behaves like a Poisson process. We finally prove the convergence, in the continuous-time limit, of the corresponding multiplication operators on the canonical Fock space, with an explicit expression in terms of the associated 3-tensor again.
We consider a non-interacting bipartite quantum system $mathcal H_S^Aotimesmathcal H_S^B$ undergoing repeated quantum interactions with an environment modeled by a chain of independant quantum systems interacting one after the other with the bipartite system. The interactions are made so that the pieces of environment interact first with $mathcal H_S^A$ and then with $mathcal H_S^B$. Even though the bipartite systems are not interacting, the interactions with the environment create an entanglement. We show that, in the limit of short interaction times, the environment creates an effective interaction Hamiltonian between the two systems. This interaction Hamiltonian is explicitly computed and we show that it keeps track of the order of the successive interactions with $mathcal H_S^A$ and $mathcal H_S^B$. Particular physical models are studied, where the evolution of the entanglement can be explicitly computed. We also show the property of return of equilibrium and thermalization for a family of examples.
