Continuous-time quantum walk spatial search on the Bollob\'as scale-free network

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the scale-free structure of networks influences the efficiency of continuous-time quantum walk-based spatial search, revealing the importance of global network properties like closeness centrality over local features.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the global structure, especially closeness centrality, determines search time, and highlights the role of hub nodes in the quantum spatial search on scale-free networks.

Findings

Search time correlates strongly with closeness centrality.

Marked nodes near the hub have significantly shorter search times.

Distribution of search times follows a multi-mode lognormal pattern.

Abstract

The scale-free property emerges in various real-world networks and is an essential property which characterizes the dynamics or features of such networks. In this work we investigate the effect of this scale-free property on a quantum information processing task of finding a marked node in the network, known as the quantum spatial search. We analyze the quantum spatial search algorithm using continuous-time quantum walk on the Bollob\'{a}s network, and evaluate the time $T$ to localize the quantum walker on the marked node starting from an unbiased initial state. Our main finding is that $T$ is determined by the global structure around the marked node, while some local information of the marked node such as degree does not identify $T$. We discuss this by examining the correlation between $T$ and some centrality measures of the network, and show that the closeness centrality of the marked node is highly correlated with $T$. We also characterize the distribution of $T$ by marking different nodes in the network, which displays a multi-mode lognormal distribution. Especially on the Bollob\'{a}s network, $T$ is magnitude of orders shorter depending whether the marked node is adjacent to the largest degree hub node or not. However, as $T$ depends on the property of the marked node, one requires some amount of prior knowledge about such property of the marked node in order to identify the optimal time to measure the quantum walker and achieve fast search. These results indicate that the existence of the hub node in the scale-free network is playing a crucial role on the quantum spatial search.