Spatial quantum search in a triangular network†

The spatial search problem consists of minimising the number of steps required to find a given site in a network, with the restriction that only an oracle query or a translation to a neighbouring site is allowed at each step. We propose a quantum algorithm for the spatial search problem on a triangular lattice with N sites and torus-like boundary conditions. The proposed algorithm is a special case of the general framework for abstract search proposed by Ambainis, Kempe and Rivosh (AKR) in Ambainis et al. (2005) and Tulsi in Tulsi (2008) applied to a triangular network. The AKR–Tulsi formalism was employed to show that the time complexity of the quantum search on the triangular lattice is $O(\sqrt{N \log N})$.