Talk:Quantum random walk

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I can't believe someone put quantum random walks on wikipedia. First I should say that I'm really impressed that this is even here, but it has some substantial shortcomings.

First of all, this article only mentions discrete quantum walk. Continuous quantum walks are very specific as well.

This discussion of quantum random walks is from a very mathematical perspective. I think it could help to add in more of a physical perspective (e.g. as the discretization of the Schrodinger/Dirac equation http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9604003) and significantly in terms of their algorithmic applications for quantum computer (see, for instance, http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0403120).

In particular, the definition of a discrete quantum random walk should be rewritten in the language of quantum mechanics. This means in terms of unitary shift and coin operators acting on Hilbert spaces. This is how it will make sense to physicists.

Also, quantum walks becoming classical walk in the limit of continuous measurement is a way to define them as well.

(I'm an undergrad who spent last summer researching algorithmic applications of quantum walks.)

--shoyer (talk) 05:41, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

The recent (anonymous) rewriting of the summary was mine -- I plan to return and rewrite the remainder of the article as I find the time. shoyer (talk) 23:08, 29 November 2007 (UTC)