Hadamard Rigidity of Positive Sojourn Time Distributions for Rotation Coins

Source abstract

We study the distribution of the positive sojourn time for a one-dimensional two state quantum walk, conditioned on return to the origin. Konno showed that, for the Hadamard walk, this conditional distribution is exactly uniform at times divisible by $4$. In this paper, we investigate whether this finite time exact uniformity characterizes the Hadamard coin within the family of rotation coins. For a fixed initial state, we prove that the following three conditions are equivalent for rotation coins: the conditional distribution is exactly uniform at time $8$; the conditional distribution is exactly uniform at every time $4m$ with $m\ge2$; and the coin is the Hadamard coin. Thus, the uniformity phenomenon found by Konno is characterized as a rigidity phenomenon of the Hadamard coin within the rotation coin family. The proof uses a matrix-valued generating function for paths returning to the origin. We analyze the algebraic structure arising from an absorbing process on the half line. Finally, by comparing low degree coefficients at time $8$, we show that exact uniformity forces the rotation coin to be the Hadamard coin.