Quantum walks as mathematical foundation for quantum gates

Abstract

It is demonstrated that in gate-based quantum computing architectures quantum walk is a natural mathematical description of quantum gates. It originates from field-matter interaction driving the system, but is not attached to specific qubit designs and can be formulated for very general field-matter interactions. It is shown that, most generally, gates are described by a set of coined quantum walks. Rotating wave and resonant approximations for field-matter interaction simplify the walks, factorizing the coin, and leading to pure continuous time quantum walk description. The walks reside on a graph formed by the Hilbert space of all involved qubits and auxiliary states, if present. Physical interactions between different parts of the system necessary to propagate entanglement through such graph---quantum network---enter via reduction of symmetries in graph edges. Description for several single- and two-qubit gates are given as examples.