Quantum Walk on the Generalized Birkhoff Polytope Graph

We study discrete-time quantum walks on generalized Birkhoff polytope graphs (GBPGs), which arise in the solution-set to certain transportation linear programming problems (TLPs). It is known that quantum walks mix at most quadratically faster than random walks on cycles, two-dimensional lattices, hypercubes, and bounded-degree graphs. In contrast, our numerical results show that it is possible to achieve a greater than quadratic quantum speedup for the mixing time on a subclass of GBPG (TLP with two consumers and m suppliers). We analyze two types of initial states. If the walker starts on a single node, the quantum mixing time does not depend on m, even though the graph diameter increases with it. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of its kind. If the walker is initially spread over a maximal clique, the quantum mixing time is O(m/ϵ), where ϵ is the threshold used in the mixing times. This result is better than the classical mixing time, which is O(m1.5/ϵ).

Dynamical Semigroups in the Birkhoff Polytope of Order 3 as a Tool for Analysis of Quantum Channels

In the present paper we show a link between bistochastic quantum channels and classical maps. The primary goal of this work is to analyse the multiplicative structure of the Birkhoff polytope of order 3 (the simplest nontrivial case). A suitable complex parametrization of the Birkhoff polytope is proposed, which reveals several its symmetries and characteristics, in particular: (i) the structure of Markov semigroups inside the Birkhoff polytope, (ii) the relation between the set of Markov time evolutions, the set of positive definite matrices and the set of divisible matrices. A condition for Markov time evolution of semigroups in the set of symmetric bistochastic matrices is derived, which leads to an universal conserved quantity for all Markov evolutions. Finally, the complex parametrization is extended to the Birkhoff polytope of order 4.

Ehrhart Series of Polytopes Related to Symmetric Doubly-Stochastic Matrices

In Ehrhart theory, the $h^*$-vector of a rational polytope often provides insights into properties of the polytope that may be otherwise obscured. As an example, the Birkhoff polytope, also known as the polytope of real doubly-stochastic matrices, has a unimodal $h^*$-vector, but when even small modifications are made to the polytope, the same property can be very difficult to prove. In this paper, we examine the $h^*$-vectors of a class of polytopes containing real doubly-stochastic symmetric matrices.