The change of the entangling power of
n fixed bipartite unitary gates, describing interactions, when interlaced with local unitary operators describing monopartite evolutions, is studied as a model of the entangling power of generic Hamiltonian dynamics. A generalization of the local unitary averaged entangling power for arbitrary subsystem dimensions is derived. This quantity shows an exponential saturation to the random matrix theory (RMT) average of the bipartite space, indicating thermalization of quantum gates that could otherwise be very non-generic and have arbitrarily small, but nonzero, entanglement. The rate of approach is determined by the entangling power of the fixed bipartite unitary, which is invariant with respect to local unitaries. The thermalization is also studied numerically via the spectrum of the reshuffled and partially transposed unitary matrices, which is shown to tend to the Girko circle law expected for random Ginibre matrices. As a prelude, the entangling power
ep is analyzed along with the gate typicality
gt for bipartite unitary gates acting on two qubits and some higher dimensional systems. We study the structure of the set representing all unitaries projected into the plane
(ep,gt) and characterize its boundaries which contains distinguished gates including Fourier gate, CNOT and its generalizations, swap and its fractional powers. In this way, a family of gates with extreme properties is identified and analyzed. We remark on the use of these operators as building blocks for many-body quantum systems.
Entanglement properties of bipartite unitary operators are studied via their local invariants, namely the entangling power e p and a complementary quantity, the gate typicality g t .We characterize the boundaries of the set K 2 representing all two-qubit gates projected onto the plane (e p , g t ) showing that the fractional powers of the SWAP operator form a parabolic boundary of K 2 , while the other bounds are formed by two straight lines.In this way, a family of gates with extreme properties is identified and analyzed.We also show that the parabolic curve representing powers of SWAP persists in the set K N for gates of higher dimensions (N > 2).Furthermore, we study entanglement of bipartite quantum gates applied sequentially n times, and we analyze the influence of interlacing local unitary operations, which model generic Hamiltonian dynamics.An explicit formula for the entangling power of a gate applied n times averaged over random local unitary dynamics is derived for an arbitrary dimension of each subsystem.This quantity shows an exponential saturation to the value predicted by the random matrix theory, indicating "thermalization" in the entanglement properties of sequentially applied quantum gates that can have arbitrarily small, but nonzero, entanglement to begin with.The thermalization is further characterized by the spectral properties of the reshuffled and partially transposed unitary matrices.
Achieving perfect control over the parameters defining a quantum gate is, in general, a very challenging task, and at the same time, environmental interactions can introduce disturbances to the initial states as well. Here we address the problem of how the imperfections in unitaries and noise present in the input states affect the entanglement-generating power of a given quantum gate -- we refer to it as imperfect (noisy) entangling power. We observe that, when the parameters of a given unitary are chosen randomly from a Gaussian distribution centered around the desired mean, the quenched average entangling power -- averaged across multiple random samplings -- exhibits intriguing behavior like it may increase or show nonmonotonic behavior with the increase of disorder strength for certain classes of diagonal unitary operators. For arbitrary unitary operators, the quenched average power tends to stabilize, showing almost constant behavior with variation in the parameters instead of oscillating. Our observations also reveal that, in the presence of a local noise model, the input states that maximize the entangling power of a given unitary operator differ considerably from the noiseless scenario. Additionally, we report that the rankings among unitary operators according to their entangling power in the noiseless case change depending on the noise model and noise strength.
We study quantum dynamics through the lens of entanglement generation and characterize the underlying unitary evolution by the distinct signatures it imprints on the time-dependent entangling power. For a unitary operator, we characterize ergodicity by the equality between its long-time-averaged entangling power and the Haar-averaged linear entropy. We define mixing more stringently as the convergence of the time-dependent entangling power itself to the Haar value at long times. Within this framework, we establish the ergodic hierarchy of dynamical behavior, showing in particular that mixing implies ergodicity, whereas ergodicity does not necessarily imply mixing. As an application, we find that two-qubit unitary gates are neither ergodic nor mixing: their long-time-averaged entangling power can take only four discrete values, none of which coincides with the Haar average. We then investigate many-body dynamics using the kicked Ising chain and find that the long-time-averaged entangling power converges to the Haar value in both integrable and nonintegrable cases, indicating ergodicity. Remarkably, however, the nonintegrable chain exhibits mixing, whereas the integrable chain, despite being ergodic, is demonstrably nonmixing. We also introduce a Lyapunov-like exponent to characterize the rate at which the time-dependent entangling power approaches its saturation value. We find that this exponent increases systematically with the degree of integrability breaking in the many-body system. Our results establish entanglement generation as a useful framework for characterizing dynamical systems and reveal qualitatively different signatures of integrability beyond conventional diagnostics.
Operator entanglement is a well-established measure of operator complexity across a system bipartition. In this work, we introduce a measure of the ability of a unitary channel to generate operator entanglement, representing an operator-level generalization of the state-space entangling power. This operator space entangling power is demonstrated to be linked to the scrambling properties of the unitary channel via the recently introduced concept of mutual averaged noncommutativity of quantum operator algebras. An upper bound for the operator space entangling power is identified that corresponds to unitary channels with scrambling properties akin to those of typical unitaries. Additionally, for Hamiltonian dynamics, we find that the short-time growth rate of the operator space entangling power matches the Gaussian scrambling rate of the bipartite out-of-time-order correlator, establishing a direct link between information scrambling and operator entanglement generation for short timescales. Finally, we examine the average growth of local operator entanglement across a symmetric bipartition of a spin chain. For dual-unitary circuits, a combination of analytical and numerical investigations demonstrates that the average growth of local operator entanglement exhibits two distinct regimes in relation to the operator space entangling power of the building-block gate.
The entangling power of a unitary operator acting on a bipartite Hilbert space measures the entanglement it generates from product states, averaged over the inputs. A finite-dimensional unitary has a spectral decomposition
U=∑a=1neiθaPa, where
eiθa are the eigenvalues,
Pa the corresponding eigen-projectors, and
n is the number of distinct eigenvalues. After removing an overall phase, the entangling power is a function on the
(n−1)-torus of relative eigenphases at fixed spectral projectors. We prove that this function is stationary at all
2n−1 points on the torus where every relative phase is
0 or
π, which we define as \textit{corners}. Up to an overall phase,
U at each corner is a generalized reflection
R=I−2Q satisfying
R2=I, where
Q is the sum of spectral projectors whose relative phase is
π. At the corner the entangling power is expressed in terms of seven local-unitary invariants of
Q. A unitary gate
U can be realized as a corner of some projector family if and only if
U2∝I, a condition satisfied by many Clifford and non-Clifford gates. We illustrate the theorem with two-qubit gates,
SU(N) channel decompositions, and two-site spin chains, obtaining examples of minima, maxima, and saddle points. In addition, a corner that is a saddle point on the full phase torus can appear as a local maximum or minimum along different time-evolution trajectories.