Localization-like effect in two-dimensional alternate quantum walks with periodic coin operations

Abstract: Exploiting multi-dimensional quantum walks as feasible platforms for quantum computation and quantum simulation is attracting constantly growing attention from a broad experimental physics community. Here, we propose a two-dimensional quantum walk scheme with a single-qubit coin that presents, in the considered regimes, a strong localization-like effect on the walker. The result could provide new possible directions for the implementation of quantum algorithms or from the point of view of quantum simulation. We characterize the localization-like effect in terms of the parameters of a step-dependent qubit operation that acts on the coin space after any standard coin operation, showing that a proper choice can guarantee a non-negligible probability of finding the walker in the origin even for large times. We finally discuss the robustness to imperfections, a qualitative relation with coherences behavior, and possible experimental realizations of this model with the current state-of-the-art settings.