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arXiv:1607.00079 · Physical Review A

Measurement of many-body chaos using a quantum clock

Guanyu Zhu, Mohammad Hafezi, Tarun Grover

Published Dec 22, 2016• 154 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

There has been recent progress in understanding chaotic features in many-body quantum systems. Motivated by the scrambling of information in black holes, it has been suggested that the time dependence of out-of-time-ordered (OTO) correlation functions such as $\ensuremath{\langle}{O}_{2}(t){O}_{1}(0){O}_{2}(t){O}_{1}(0)\ensuremath{\rangle}$ is a faithful measure of quantum chaos. Experimentally, these correlators are challenging to access since they apparently require access to both forward and backward time evolution with the system Hamiltonian. Here we propose a protocol to measure such OTO correlators using an ancilla that controls the direction of time. Specifically, by coupling the state of the ancilla to the system Hamiltonian of interest, we can emulate the forward and backward time propagation, where the ancilla plays the role of a quantum clock. Within this scheme, the continuous evolution of the entire system (the system of interest and the ancilla) is governed by a time-independent Hamiltonian. We discuss the implementation of our protocol with current circuit-QED technology for a class of interacting Hamiltonians. Our protocol is immune to errors that could occur when the direction of time evolution is externally controlled by a classical switch.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.94.062329

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There has been recent progress in understanding chaotic features in many-body quantum systems. Motivated by the scrambling of information in black holes, it has been suggested that the time dependence of out-of-time-ordered (OTO) correlation functions such as \ensuremath⟨O2(t)O1(0)O2(t)O1(0)\ensuremath⟩\ensuremath{\langle}{O}_{2}(t){O}_{1}(0){O}_{2}(t){O}_{1}(0)\ensuremath{\rangle}\ensuremath⟨O2​(t)O1​(0)O2​(t)O1​(0)\ensuremath⟩ is a faithful measure of quantum chaos. Experimentally, these correlators are challenging to access since they apparently require access to both forward and backward time evolution with the system Hamiltonian. Here we propose a protocol to measure such OTO correlators using an ancilla that controls the direction of time. Specifically, by coupling the state of the ancilla to the system Hamiltonian of interest, we can emulate the forward and backward time propagation, where the ancilla plays the role of a quantum clock. Within this scheme, the continuous evolution of the entire system (the system of interest and the ancilla) is governed by a time-independent Hamiltonian. We discuss the implementation of our protocol with current circuit-QED technology for a class of interacting Hamiltonians. Our protocol is immune to errors that could occur when the direction of time evolution is externally controlled by a classical switch.
Most experimental protocols for measuring scrambling require time evolution with a Hamiltonian and with the Hamiltonian's negative counterpart (backward time evolution). Engineering controllable quantum many-body systems for which such forward and backward evolution is possible is a significant experimental challenge. Furthermore, if the system of interest is quantum chaotic, one might worry that any small errors in the time reversal will be rapidly amplified, obscuring the physics of scrambling. This paper undermines this expectation: We exhibit a renormalization protocol that extracts nearly ideal out-of-time-ordered-correlator measurements from imperfect experimental measurements. We analytically and numerically demonstrate the protocol's effectiveness, up to the scrambling time, in a variety of models and for sizable imperfections. The scheme extends to errors from decoherence by an environment.
We introduce a protocol that gives access to out-of-time-ordered correlation functions in many-body quantum systems. Unlike other such protocols, our proposal, which can be applied to arbitrary initial states, neither requires ancilla degrees of freedom to the quantum system of interest, nor has the need for randomized measurements. Nontrivial experimental capabilities required to implement the protocol are single-site measurements, single-site rotations, and backwards time evolution. To exemplify the implementation of the protocol, we put forward a strategy for Hamiltonian sign inversion $H\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{-}H$ in arrays of Rydberg-dressed atoms. In this way, a complete and practical toolbox is obtained for the measurement of out-of-time-ordered correlations in equilibrium and nonequilibrium situations.
Out-of-time-ordered correlation functions (OTOCs) play a crucial role in the study of thermalization, entanglement, and quantum chaos, as they quantify the scrambling of quantum information due to complex interactions. As a consequence of their out-of-time-ordered nature, OTOCs are difficult to measure experimentally. Here we propose an OTOC measurement protocol that does not rely on the reversal of time evolution and is easy to implement in a range of experimental settings. The protocol accounts for both pure and mixed initial states, and is applicable to systems that interact with environmental degrees of freedom. We demonstrate the application of our protocol by the characterization of scrambling in a periodically driven spin that exhibits quantum chaos.
We provide a general protocol to measure out-of-time-order correlation functions. These correlation functions are of broad theoretical interest for diagnosing the scrambling of quantum information in interacting quantum systems and have recently received particular attention in the study of chaos and black holes within holographic duality. Measuring them requires an echo-type sequence in which the sign of a many-body Hamiltonian is reversed. We illustrate our protocol by detailing an implementation employing cold atoms and cavity quantum electrodynamics to probe spin models with nonlocal interactions. To verify the feasibility of the scheme with current technology, we analyze the effects of dissipation in a chaotic kicked-top model. Finally, we propose a number of other experimental platforms where similar out-of-time-order correlation functions can be measured.
Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) are the main tool for probing quantum chaos and scrambling, and have become crucial probes in many areas of quantum computing. However, the measurement of OTOCs is difficult to implement on analog quantum computers due to the requirement of backward time evolution. In this paper, we develop and implement a randomized measurement protocol to compute OTOCs on Aquila by QuEra Computing. Unlike traditional methods that require backward time evolution, our approach utilizes a sequence of global randomized quenches that approximates the unitary 2-design properties necessary for extracting infinite-temperature OTOCs from statistical correlations. We demonstrate the protocol's success by explicitly observing the lightcone of information propagation in 1D Rydberg chains, and compare hardware results to both state-vector simulations and matrix product state (MPS) tensor network calculations. This work establishes the first demonstration of fully analog randomized OTOC measurements in neutral-atom simulators, providing a scalable pathway to probe quantum chaos in complex many-body systems.
Out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC), been suggested as a measure of quantum information scrambling in quantum many-body systems, has received enormous attention recently. The experimental measurement of OTOC is quite challenging. The existing theoretical protocols consist in implementing time-reversal operations or using ancillary quantum systems, therefore only a few experiments have been reported. Recently, a new protocol to detect OTOC using statistical correlations between randomized measurements was put forward. In this work, we detect the OTOCs of a kicked-Ising model using this new measurement method on a 4-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance quantum simulator. In experiment, we use random Hamiltonian evolutions to generate the random operations that are required by the randomized OTOC detection protocol. Our experimental results are in good agreement with the theoretical predictions, thus confirming the feasibility of the protocols. Therefore, our work represents a step in exploring realistic quantum chaotic dynamics in complicated quantum systems.