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Temporal nonclassicality in continuous-time quantum walks

Paolo Luppi*, Claudia Benedetti†, and Andrea Smirne‡

  • *Contact author: paolo.luppi@unimi.it
  • †Contact author: claudia.benedetti@unimi.it
  • ‡Contact author: andrea.smirne@unimi.it
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Phys. Rev. A 113, 042212 – Published 14 April, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/11ty-bsfy

Abstract

Quantum walks represent a paradigmatic framework to explore and manipulate quantum behaviors. In this paper, we investigate the genuinely quantum features of continuous-time quantum walks by combining a single-time and a multitime quantifier of nonclassicality. On the one hand, we consider the quantum-classical dynamical distance DQC(t), which measures the departure of the time-evolved quantum state of a continuous-time quantum walk from the classical state of a random walk on the same graph. On the other hand, we analyze the joint probability distributions associated with sequential measurements of the walker's position, assessing their violation of the classical Kolmogorov consistency conditions via a dedicated quantifier K¯(t). We demonstrate a quadratic short-time scaling of K¯(t), which differs from the known linear scaling of DQC(t), but, as the latter, is fully determined by the degree of the initially occupied node and is independent of the global graph topology. At longer times, instead, K¯(t) exhibits a pronounced topology-driven behavior: it is strongly suppressed on complete graphs while remaining finite and oscillatory on cycles, in contrast with the almost topology-independent asymptotics of DQC(t). We then extend the analysis to Markovian open-system dynamics, focusing on dephasing in the position basis (Haken-Strobl model) and in the energy basis (intrinsic decoherence). Site dephasing drives both quantifiers to zero, with the decay of K¯(t) controlled by the spectral gap of the corresponding Lindblad generator. By contrast, energy-basis dephasing preserves a finite asymptotic value of K¯(t), depending on the overlap structure of the Laplacian eigenspaces with the site basis. Our results demonstrate that distinct notions of nonclassicality lead to qualitatively and quantitatively different assessments of how quantum a given walk is, pointing at the intricate nature of temporal quantum correlations in networked quantum systems under realistic decoherence.

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Phys. Rev. A 113, 042212– Published 14 April, 2026
  • Received 27 December 2025
  • Accepted 18 March 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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