This is the 9th in series of international conference focussing on aspects of quantum walks and quantum simulation. Quantum simulation has recently established itself as an area of study in quantum physics that merges fundamental and applied questions. Such an interaction results in a more operational understanding of aspects of quantum mechanics in terms of nature description. The idea to simulate the dynamics of a quantum system by a quantum device was first introduced by Richard Feynman and developed in different frameworks, from mathematics to Computer Science and fundamental physics.
Quantum Cellular Automata (QCA) are a way to describe quantum systems and their dynamics from a mathematical and computational perspective, a grid of quantum autonomous systems, interacting through local rules. Quantum Walks (QWs) are a special case of reversible QCA, namely the single particle sector. Quite surprisingly, this simple one particle quantum automaton is an excellent tool for modeling a large spectrum of physical and biological phenomena, relevant both for fundamental science and for applications. Applications spread from search algorithms and graph isomorphism algorithms to modeling and simulating quantum and classical dynamics. These models have sparked various theoretical investigations covering areas in mathematics, computer science, quantum information and statistical mechanics and this interdisciplinary conference will aim to bring together researchers from all of these areas, to discuss recent work and trigger future directions of research in the field.

During the “research in peace” event, we will work on the development of theories based upon quantum walks and quantum simulation models, in order to solve interrelated problems concerning the simulation of standard quantum field theory, quantum gravity and cosmological models, dissipative quantum computing, searching on complex quantum networks, and the topological classification of multi-particle quantum walks.