Quantum walks on join graphs
Steve Kirkland, Hermie Monterde · Discrete Mathematics · 2025
The join X ∨ Y of two graphs X and Y is the graph obtained by joining each vertex of X to each vertex of Y . We explore the behaviour of a continuous quantum walk on a join graph with positive edge weights having the adjacency matrix or Laplacian matrix as its associated Hamiltonian, where the underlying graphs are assumed to be regular when dealing with the adjacency matrix. We characterize strong cospectrality, periodicity and perfect state transfer (PST) in a join graph. We also determine conditions in which strong cospectrality, periodicity and PST are preserved in the join. Under certain conditions, we show that there are graphs with no PST that exhibit PST when joined with another graph. We also show that | | U M ( X ∨ Y , t ) u , v | − | U M ( X , t ) u , v | | ≤ 2 | V ( X ) | for all vertices u and v of X , where U M ( X ∨ Y , t ) and U M ( X , t ) denote the transition matrices of X ∨ Y and X respectively relative to the adjacency or Laplacian matrix. We demonstrate that the bound 2 | V ( X ) | is tight for infinite families of graphs.