One-dimensional three-state quantum walks: Weak limits and localization

We investigate one-dimensional three-state quantum walks. We find a formula for the moments of the weak limit distribution via a vacuum expectation of powers of a self-adjoint operator. We use this formula to fully characterize the localization of three-state quantum walks in one dimension. The localization is also characterized by investing the eigenvectors of the evolution operator for the quantum walk. As a byproduct we clarify the concepts of localization differently used in the literature. We also study the continuous part of the limit distribution. For typical examples we show that the continuous part is the same kind as that of two-state quantum walks. We provide with explicit expressions for the density of the weak limits of some three-state quantum walks.