The quantum Lévy walk

Abstract

We introduce the quantum Lévy walk to study transport and decoherence in a quantum random model. We have derived from second-order perturbation theory the quantum master equation for a Lévy-like particle that moves along a lattice through scale-free hopping while interacting with a thermal bath of oscillators. The general evolution of the quantum Lévy particle has been solved for different preparations of the system. We examine the evolution of the quantum purity, the localized correlation and the probability to be in a lattice site, all of them leading to important conclusions concerning quantum irreversibility and decoherence features. We prove that the quantum thermal mean-square displacement is finite under a constraint that is different when compared to the classical Weierstrass random walk. We prove that when the mean-square displacement is infinite the density of state has a complex null-set inside the Brillouin zone. We show the existence of a critical behavior in the continuous eigenenergy which is related to its non-differentiability and self-affine characteristics. In general, our approach allows us to study analytically quantum fluctuations and decoherence in a long-range hopping model.