Quantum Random Walk: Exact solution for one spatial dimension
First sharpen the definition of the of the combinations function :


We temporarily change variable from [t,x] time and space to [r,] which are number of steps to the right or left on the space time diagram:

Next, we count the number of paths with and right and left moving steps respectively with c corners. We distinguish the following.cases 

NRR: path starts out moving to the right ends up moving to the left,
NLL: path starts out moving to the left ends up moving to the right
NRL: path starts out moving to the right, ends up moving to the left etc.:

To count the NRL paths for example, refer to this diagrambased on paper by Louis Kauffman:

In this example, for NRL . The blue(vertical) arrows are locations of the corners where the particle changes direction from left moving to right moving. Since, by hypothesis the particle starts out moving to the right, and ends up moving left the first and last locations are excluded. Since each right to left transition matches with a left to right transition except for the final right to left, there are (c-1)/2 of these blue arrows and they are distributed among r –1 locations. The usual combinatorial formula applies. Similar analysis apples to the right to left corners. Main difference is that the hypothesis of the particle starting out to the right  fixes the location of the first right to left corner(light red horizontal arrow).



 
 
 

Unnormalized Wave Functions

Apply the weighing rule “a factor of i for each corner”:




Add these together to get the unnormalized weighed complex probability:


(Treat the initial condition as a special case the functions Nxx are all zero there)

Normalized Wave Function

To get anormalized wave function, divide the un-normalized wave function by the following normalizing constant:

where


We can show for large t:
 

The probability and current functions are:


Animated GIF of the process:


Compare with Dirac Equation
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