Open quantum walks on graphs

Open quantum walks (OQW) are formulated as quantum Markov chains on graphs. It is shown that OQWs are a very useful tool for the formulation of dissipative quantum computing algorithms and for dissipative quantum state preparation. In particular, single qubit gates and the CNOT-gate are implemented as OQWs on fully connected graphs. Also, dissipative quantum state preparation of arbitrary single qubit states and of all two-qubit Bell-states is demonstrated. Finally, the discrete time version of dissipative quantum computing is shown to be more efficient if formulated in the language of OQWs. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.