Entanglement entropy is a widely applicable indicator of the onset of quantum chaos. In particular, the entanglement entropy of the wave function after a quench from an initial state with low entanglement can be used to study the thermalization of the system. Here, the authors propose an initial-state independent quantity called the ``operator entanglement entropy'' (opEE) to extract the properties of the unitary evolution operator. They study the growth of the opEE in Floquet, chaotic, and many-body localized systems. They respectively have a linear, power-law, and logarithmic growth before reaching extensive saturation values. The most chaotic Floquet spin model has the maximal saturation value among the three classes and is identical to the value of a random unitary operator (the Page value). The authors interpret the opEE as the state EE of a quenched state living in a doubled Hilbert space, thus establishing its consistency with the existing state EE results. They conclude that the EE of the evolution operator should characterize the propagation of information in these systems.
Entanglement entropy is a widely applicable indicator of the onset of quantum chaos. In particular, the entanglement entropy of the wave function after a quench from an initial state with low entanglement can be used to study the thermalization of the system. Here, the authors propose an initial-state independent quantity called the ``operator entanglement entropy'' (opEE) to extract the properties of the unitary evolution operator. They study the growth of the opEE in Floquet, chaotic, and many-body localized systems. They respectively have a linear, power-law, and logarithmic growth before reaching extensive saturation values. The most chaotic Floquet spin model has the maximal saturation value among the three classes and is identical to the value of a random unitary operator (the Page value). The authors interpret the opEE as the state EE of a quenched state living in a doubled Hilbert space, thus establishing its consistency with the existing state EE results. They conclude that the EE of the evolution operator should characterize the propagation of information in these systems.
The entangling power and operator entanglement entropy are state-independent measures of entanglement. Their growth and saturation is examined in the time-evolution operator of quantum many-body systems that can range from the integrable to the fully chaotic. An analytically solvable integrable model of the kicked transverse-field Ising chain is shown to have ballistic growth of operator von Neumann entanglement entropy and exponentially fast saturation of the linear entropy with time. Surprisingly, a fully chaotic model with longitudinal fields turned on shares the same growth phase, and is consistent with a random matrix model that is also exactly solvable for the linear entropy entanglements. However, an examination of the entangling power shows that its largest value is significantly less than the nearly maximal value attained by the nonintegrable one. The importance of long-range spectral correlations, and not just the nearest-neighbor spacing, is pointed out in determining the growth of entanglement in nonintegrable systems. Finally, an interesting case that displays some features peculiar to both integrable and nonintegrable systems is briefly discussed.
Quantum quench is a non-equilibrium process where the Hamiltonian is suddenly changed during the quantum evolution. The change can be made by spatially local perturbations (local quench) or globally switching to a completely different Hamiltonian (global quench). This thesis investigates the post-quench non-equilibrium dynamics with an emphasis on the time dependence of the quantum entanglement. We inspect the scaling of entanglement entropy (EE) to learn how correlation and entanglement built up in a quench. We begin with two local quench examples. In Chap. 2, we apply a local operator to the groundstate of the quantum Lifshitz model and monitor the change of the EE. We find that the entanglement grows according to the dynamical exponent z = 2 and then saturates to the scaling dimension of the perturbing operator -- a value representing its strength. In Chap. 3, we study the evolution after connecting two different one-dimensional critical chains at their ends. The Loschmidt echo which measures the similarity between the evolved state and the initial one decays with a power law, whose exponent is the scaling dimension of the defect (junction). Among other conclusions, we see that the local quench dynamics contain universal information of the (critical) theory. In the global quench scenario, the change of the Hamiltonian affects all parts of the system. In this thesis, we focus on the global chaotic quench driven by generic non-integrable Hamiltonians. In Chap. 4, we propose to use the operator entanglement entropy of the unitary operator as a probe. Its fast linear entanglement production is sharply contrasted to the slow logarithmic spreading of the many-body localized system. The entanglement saturation suggests that the evolution operator in the long time can be modeled by a random unitary matrix. In Chap. 5, we construct a random tensor network which consists of random unitary matrices connected locally to model chaotic evolution with local interactions. We find that the entanglement dynamics is mapped to the statistical mechanics of interacting random walks. This appealing emergent picture allows us to understand the universal linear growth as well as the fluctuations of entanglement in a chaotic quench.
Operator scrambling is a crucial ingredient of quantum chaos. Specifically, in the quantum chaotic system, a simple operator can become increasingly complicated under unitary time evolution. This can be diagnosed by various measures such as square of the commutator (out-of-time-ordered correlator), operator entanglement entropy etc. In this paper, we discuss operator scrambling in three representative models: a chaotic spin-1/2 chain with spatially local interactions, a 2-local spin model and the quantum linear map. In the first two examples, although the speeds of scrambling are quite different, a simple Pauli spin operator can eventually approach a "highly entangled" operator with operator entanglement entropy taking a volume law value (close to the Page value). Meanwhile, the spectrum of the operator reduced density matrix develops a universal spectral correlation which can be characterized by the Wishart random matrix ensemble. In the second example, we further connect the 2-local model into a one dimensional chain and briefly discuss the operator scrambling there. In contrast, in the quantum linear map, although the square of commutator can increase exponentially with time, a simple operator does not scramble but performs chaotic motion in the operator basis space determined by the classical linear map. We show that once we modify the quantum linear map such that operator can mix in the operator basis, the operator entanglement entropy can grow and eventually saturate to its Page value, thus making it a truly quantum chaotic model.
Generic quantum many-body systems typically show a linear growth of the entanglement entropy after a quench from a product state. While entanglement is a property of the wave function, it is generated by the unitary time-evolution operator and is therefore reflected in its increasing complexity as quantified by the operator entanglement entropy. Using numerical simulations of a static and a periodically driven quantum spin chain, we show that there is a robust correspondence between the entanglement entropy growth of typical product states and the operator entanglement entropy of the unitary evolution operator, while special product states, e.g., σz basis states, can exhibit faster entanglement production. In the presence of a disordered magnetic field in our spin chains, we show that both the wave function and operator entanglement entropies exhibit a power-law growth with the same disorder-dependent exponent and clarify the apparent discrepancy in previous results. These systems, in the absence of conserved densities, provide further evidence for slow information spreading on the ergodic side of the many-body localization transition.
Entanglement entropy is a fundamental diagnostic for quantum chaos, typically exhibiting volume-law scaling in highly excited eigenstates of chaotic many-body systems. In this work, we present a striking counterexample: a Floquet-driven quantum many-body system with a Rydberg-like blockade that, despite being fully chaotic as indicated by its Wigner-Dyson level statistics and local thermalization, exhibits a strict area-law entanglement entropy. Specifically, the entanglement entropy of every Floquet eigenstate is bounded by ln2, independent of system size. We trace this anomaly to the specific Hilbert space structure imposed by the blockades, which restricts the Schmidt rank across a bipartition. Furthermore, we generalize this discovery by establishing a duality between constrained many-body Hamiltonians and single-particle quantum walks on median graphs, and we outline a general procedure for constructing systems with an entanglement entropy bounded by a predetermined constant. Our results demonstrate that entanglement entropy alone is an insufficient diagnostic of many-body quantum chaos and highlight the profound impact of Hilbert space geometry on quantum dynamics and thermalization.
We give a detailed theory for the leading coarse-grained dynamics of entanglement entropy of states and of operators in generic short-range interacting quantum many-body systems. This includes operators spreading under Heisenberg time evolution, which we find are much less entangled than "typical" operators of the same spatial support. Extending previous conjectures based on random circuit dynamics, we provide evidence that the leading-order entanglement dynamics of a given chaotic system are determined by a function E(v), which is model-dependent, but which we argue satisfies certain general constraints. In a minimal membrane picture, E(v) is the "surface tension" of the membrane and is a function of the membrane's orientation v in spacetime. For one-dimensional (1D) systems this surface tension is related by a Legendre transformation to an entanglement entropy growth rate Γ(∂S/∂x) which depends on the spatial "gradient" of the entanglement entropy S(x,t) across the cut at position x. We show how to extract the entanglement growth functions numerically in 1D at infinite temperature using the concept of the operator entanglement of the time evolution operator, and we discuss possible universality of E at low temperatures. Our theoretical ideas are tested against and informed by numerical results for a quantum-chaotic 1D spin Hamiltonian. These results are relevant to the broad class of chaotic many-particle systems or field theories with spatially local interactions, both in 1D and above.