Quantum survival in hybrid pursuit dynamics - a lion chasing a lamb problem

Abstract: Measurement and classical randomness usually degrade coherence; controlling where and when a subsystem is monitored can instead make them a tunable resource. We introduce a photonic time-multiplexed quantum walk whose fast reconfigurability enables precise position measurements, allowing us to study this interplay in a hybrid quantum-classical pursuit problem: A quantum walker (lamb) evolves on a line while a classical pursuer (lion) performs a lazy random walk. Each lion trajectory drives a distinct coherent, norm-reducing evolution of the lamb, with capture implemented by measurements at the lion's positions; averaging over the recorded trajectories then synthesizes a decoherent process. Counterintuitively, increasing the lion's mobility does not monotonically suppress survival: over a broad range of hopping probabilities, the lamb survives better than against an immobile predator. Directly observing this local enhancement, we demonstrate a manifestly quantum feature aided rather than hindered by classical stochastic control.