Infinite-dimensional complex dynamics: A quantum random walk (Q5936433)

The spectrum of a unitary operator \(U(\alpha)\) on \(L^2(T)\), depending on a real parameter \(\alpha \), is determined for the case when \(\alpha \) satisfies a diophantine condition. This operator is a quantization of a simple piecewise holomorphic dynamical system on the cylinder \(C^{*}\cong T\times \mathbb{R}\). It is proven that if \(\alpha \in \mathbb{R}\) satisfies the diophantine condition \(|\alpha -p/q|\geq c/q^\beta \), for some \(c>0,\) some \(2\leq \beta <5/2\), and all \(p/q\in Q\), then the operator \(U(\alpha)\) has a pure point spectrum. In the case when \(\alpha \) is close to resonance, it is shown that the spectrum of \(U(\alpha)\) is purely continuous and this implies the quantum delocalization. The results are used to compare the quantum to classical dynamics. It is established that for almost all \(\alpha \) the quantum dynamics localizes, whereas the classical dynamics does not.