Transient subdiffusion via disordered quantum walks

Transport phenomena play a crucial role in modern physics and applied sciences. Examples include thedissipation of energy across a large system, the distribution of quantum information in optical networks, andthe timely modeling of spreading diseases. In this work we experimentally prove the feasibility of disorderedquantum walks to realize a quantum simulator that is able to model general transient subdiffusive phenomena,exhibiting a sublinear spreading in space over time. Our experiment simulates such phenomena by means ofa finely controlled insertion of various levels of disorder during the evolution of the walker, enabled by theunique flexibility of our setup. This allows us to explore the full range of subdiffusive behaviors, ranging fromanomalous Anderson-like localization to normal diffusion for all experimentally accessible step numbers.