title: Measuring graph similarity through continuous-time quantum walks and the quantum Jensen-Shannon divergence.
abstract: In this paper we propose a quantum algorithm to measure the similarity between a pair of unattributed graphs. We design an experiment where the two graphs are merged by establishing a complete set of connections between their nodes and the resulting structure is probed through the evolution of continuous-time quantum walks. In order to analyze the behavior of the walks without causing wave function collapse, we base our analysis on the recently introduced quantum Jensen-Shannon divergence. In particular, we show that the divergence between the evolution of two suitably initialized quantum walks over this structure is maximum when the original pair of graphs is isomorphic. We also prove that under special conditions the divergence is minimum when the sets of eigenvalues of the Hamiltonians associated with the two original graphs have an empty intersection.
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rossi
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Informatica e Statistica, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, Venezia, Italy.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Torsello
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of York, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Edwin R
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Hancock