Pablo Arrighi

Quantum walking in curved spacetime

A discrete-time quantum walk (QW) is essentially a unitary operator driving the evolution of a single particle on the lattice. Some QWs admit a continuum limit, leading to familiar PDEs (e.g., the Dirac equation). In this paper, we study the continuum limit of a wide class of QWs and show that it leads to an entire class of PDEs, encompassing the Hamiltonian form of the massive Dirac equation in (

Block Representation of Reversible Causal Graph Dynamics

1+1

Reversible Causal Graph Dynamics

1+1) curved spacetime. Therefore, a certain QW, which we make explicit, provides us with a unitary discrete toy model of a test particle in curved spacetime, in spite of the fixed background lattice. Mathematically, we have introduced two novel ingredients for taking the continuum limit of a QW, but which apply to any quantum cellular automata: encoding and grouping.

Free fall and cellular automata

We describe a type system for the linear-algebraic λ-calculus. The type system accounts for the linear-algebraic aspects of this extension of λ-calculus: it is able to statically describe the linear combinations of terms that will be obtained when reducing the programs. This gives rise to an original type theory where types, in the same way as terms, can be superposed into linear combinations. We prove that the resulting typed λ-calculus is strongly normalising and features weak subject reduction. Finally, we show how to naturally encode matrices and vectors in this typed calculus.

Discrete Geodesics and Cellular Automata

Causal Graph Dynamics extend Cellular Automata to arbitrary, bounded-degree, time-varying graphs. The whole graph evolves in discrete time steps, and this global evolution is required to have a number of physics-like symmetries: shift-invariance (it acts everywhere the same) and causality (information has a bounded speed of propagation). We study a further physics-like symmetry, namely reversibility. More precisely, we show that Reversible Causal Graph Dynamics can be represented as finite-depth circuits of local reversible gates.

Quantum walking in curved spacetime: (3 + 1) dimensions, and beyond

Gauge-invariance is a fundamental concept in physics---known to provide the mathematical justification for all four fundamental forces. In this paper, we provide discrete counterparts to the main gauge theoretical concepts, directly in terms of Cellular Automata. More precisely, we describe a step-by-step gauging procedure to enforce local symmetries upon a given Cellular Automaton. We apply it to a simple Reversible Cellular Automaton for concreteness. From a Computer Science perspective, discretized gauge theories may be applied to numerical analysis, quantum simulation, fault-tolerant (quantum) computation. From a mathematical perspective, discreteness provides a simple yet rigorous route straight to the core concepts.

Quantum walking in curved spacetime: discrete metric

Causal Graph Dynamics extend Cellular Automata to arbitrary, bounded-degree, time-varying graphs. The whole graph evolves in discrete time steps, and this global evolution is required to have a number of physics-like symmetries: shift-invariance (it acts everywhere the same) and causality (information has a bounded speed of propagation). We study a further physics-like symmetry, namely reversibility. We extend a fundamental result on reversible cellular automata by proving that the inverse of a causal graph dynamics is a causal graph dynamics. We also address the question of the evolution of the structure of the graphs under reversible causal graph dynamics, showing that any reversible causal graph dynamics preserves the size of all but a finite number of graphs.

Modèles de calcul quantiques

Three reasonable hypotheses lead to the thesis that physical phenomena can be described and simulated with cellular automata. In this work, we attempt to describe the motion of a particle upon which a constant force is applied, with a cellular automaton, in Newtonian physics, in Special Relativity, and in General Relativity. The results are very different for these three theories.