Why Nature Likes Noisy Quantum Walks on Complex Networks

Description
Transport properties play a crucial role in several fields of science, as biology, chemistry, sociology, information science, and physics. The behavior of many dynamical processes running over complex networks is known to be closely related to the geometry of the underlying topology, but this connection becomes even harder to understand when quantum effects come into play. Here, we exploit the formalism of quantum stochastic walks to investigate the capability to quickly and robustly transmit energy (or information) between two distant points in very large complex structures, remarkably assisted by external noise and quantum features as coherence. An optimal mixing of classical and quantum transport is, very surprisingly, universal for a large class of complex networks. This universal optimality turns out to be also extremely robust with respect to geometry changes. These results might pave the way for designing optimal bio-inspired geometries of efficient transport nanostructures that can be used for solar energy and also quantum information and communication technologies. Some preliminary optically-based and genetically-engineered esperimental verifications of these ideas are finally discussed.
Organised by Andrea Rapisarda