It is shown that monic orthogonal polynomials on the unit circle are the characteristic polynomials of certain five-diagonal matrices depending on the Schur parameters. This result is achieved through the study of orthogonal Laurent polynomials on the unit circle. More precisely, it is a consequence of the five term recurrence relation obtained for these orthogonal Laurent polynomials, and the one to one correspondence established between them and the orthogonal polynomials on the unit circle. As an application, some results relating the behavior of the zeros of orthogonal polynomials and the location of Schur parameters are obtained.

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We consider quantum random walks (QRW) on the integers, a subject that has been considered in the last few years in the framework of quantum computation.We show how the theory of CMV matrices gives a natural tool to study these processes and to give results that are analogous to those that Karlin and McGregor developed to study (classical) birth-and-death processes using orthogonal polynomials on the real line.In perfect analogy with the classical case, the study of QRWs on the set of nonnegative integers can be handled using scalar-valued (Laurent) polynomials and a scalar-valued measure on the circle. In the case of classical or quantum random walks on the integers, one needs to allow for matrix-valued versions of these notions.We show how our tools yield results in the well-known case of the Hadamard walk, but we go beyond this translation-invariant model to analyze examples that are hard to analyze using other methods. More precisely, we consider QRWs on the set of nonnegative integers. The analysis of these cases leads to phenomena that are absent in the case of QRWs on the integers even if one restricts oneself to a constant coin. This is illustrated here by studying recurrence properties of the walk, but the same method can be used for other purposes.The presentation here aims at being self-contained, but we refrain from trying to give an introduction to quantum random walks, a subject well surveyed in the literature we quote. For two excellent reviews, see [1,19]. See also the recent notes [20].

We give a topological classification of quantum walks on an infinite 1D lattice, which obey one of the discrete symmetry groups of the tenfold way, have a gap around some eigenvalues at symmetry protected points, and satisfy a mild locality condition. No translation invariance is assumed. The classification is parameterized by three indices, taking values in a group, which is either trivial, the group of integers, or the group of integers modulo 2, depending on the type of symmetry. The classification is complete in the sense that two walks have the same indices if and only if they can be connected by a norm continuous path along which all the mentioned properties remain valid. Of the three indices, two are related to the asymptotic behaviour far to the right and far to the left, respectively. These are also stable under compact perturbations. The third index is sensitive to those compact perturbations which cannot be contracted to a trivial one. The results apply to the Hamiltonian case as well. In this case all compact perturbations can be contracted, so the third index is not defined. Our classification extends the one known in the translation invariant case, where the asymptotic right and left indices add up to zero, and the third one vanishes, leaving effectively only one independent index. When two translationally invariant bulks with distinct indices are joined, the left and right asymptotic indices of the joined walk are thereby fixed, and there must be eigenvalues at 1 or −1 (bulk-boundary correspondence). Their location is governed by the third index. We also discuss how the theory applies to finite lattices, with suitable homogeneity assumptions.

A notion of monitored recurrence for discrete-time quantum processes was recently introduced in [15] taking the initial state as an absorbing one. We extend this notion of monitored recurrence to absorbing subspaces of arbitrary finite dimension.The generating function approach leads to a connection with the well-known theory of operator-valued Schur functions. This is the cornerstone of a spectral characterization of subspace recurrence that generalizes some of the main results in [15]. The spectral decomposition of the unitary step operator driving the evolution yields a spectral measure, which we project onto the subspace to obtain a new spectral measure that is purely singular iff the subspace is recurrent, and consists of a pure point spectrum with a finite number of masses precisely when all states in the subspace have a finite expected return time.This notion of subspace recurrence also links the concept of expected return time to an Aharonov-Anandan phase that, in contrast to the case of state recurrence, can be non-integer. Even more surprising is the fact that averaging such geometrical phases over the absorbing subspace yields an integer with a topological meaning, so that the averaged expected return time is always a rational number. Moreover, state recurrence can occasionally give higher return probabilities than subspace recurrence, a fact that reveals once more the counterintuitive behavior of quantum systems.All these phenomena are illustrated with explicit examples, including as a natural application the analysis of site recurrence for coined walks.Key words and phrases. Quantum dynamical systems, quantum walks, recurrence, matrix Schur functions, degree of a function, Aharonov-Anandan phase, matrix measures and orthogonal polynomials on the unit circle.