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Entanglement engineering and topological protection by discrete-time quantum walks

Discrete-time quantum walks (QWs) represent robust and versatile platforms for the controlled engineering of single particle quantum dynamics, and have attracted special attention due to their algorithmic applications in quantum information science. Even in their simplest 1D architectures, they display complex topological phenomena, which can be employed in the systematic study of topological quantum phase transitions [1]. Due to the exponential scaling in the number of resources required, most experimental realizations of QWs up to date have been limited to single particles, with only a few implementations involving correlated quantum pairs. In this article we study applications of quantum walks in the controlled dynamical engineering of entanglement in bipartite bosonic systems. We show that quantum walks can be employed in the transition from mode entanglement, where indistinguishability of the quantum particles plays a key role, to the standard type of entanglement associated with distinguishable particles. We also show that, by carefully tailoring the steps in the QWs, as well as the initial state for the quantum walker, it is possible to preserve the entanglement content by topological protection. The underlying mechanism that allows for the possibility of both entanglement engineering and entanglement protection is the strong "spin-orbit" coupling induced by the QW. We anticipate that the results reported here can be employed for the controlled emulation of quantum correlations in topological phases.