Index Theory of Chiral Unitaries and Split-Step Quantum Walks

Abstract

Building from work by Cedzich et al. and Suzuki et al., we consider topological and index-theoretic properties of chiral unitaries, which are an abstraction of the time evolution of a chiral-symmetric self-adjoint operator. Split-step quantum walks provide a rich class of examples. We use the index of a pair of projections and the Cayley transform to define topological indices for chiral unitaries on both Hilbert spaces and Hilbert $C^*$-modules. In the case of the discrete time evolution of a Hamiltonian-like operator, we relate the index for chiral unitaries to the index of the Hamiltonian. We also prove a double-sided winding number formula for anisotropic split-step quantum walks on Hilbert $C^*$-modules, extending a result by Matsuzawa.