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arXiv:1707.08570 · Journal of High Energy Physics

Circuit complexity in quantum field theory

Ro Jefferson, Robert C. Myers

Published Oct 1, 2017• 476 citations
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Abstract

Motivated by recent studies of holographic complexity, we examine the question of circuit complexity in quantum field theory. We provide a quantum circuit model for the preparation of Gaussian states, in particular the ground state, in a free scalar field theory for general dimensions. Applying the geometric approach of Nielsen to this quantum circuit model, the complexity of the state becomes the length of the shortest geodesic in the space of circuits. We compare the complexity of the ground state of the free scalar field to the analogous results from holographic complexity, and find some surprising similarities.

DOI
10.1007/jhep10(2017)107

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Motivated by recent studies of holographic complexity, we examine the question of circuit complexity in quantum field theory. We provide a quantum circuit model for the preparation of Gaussian states, in particular the ground state, in a free scalar field theory for general dimensions. Applying the geometric approach of Nielsen to this quantum circuit model, the complexity of the state becomes the length of the shortest geodesic in the space of circuits. We compare the complexity of the ground state of the free scalar field to the analogous results from holographic complexity, and find some surprising similarities.
In this paper, we study circuit complexity for a free vector field of a [Formula: see text] gauge theory in Coulomb gauge, and Gaussian states. We introduce a quantum circuit model with Gaussian states, including reference and target states. Using Nielsen’s geometric approach, the complexity then can be found as the shortest geodesic in the space of states. This geodesic is based on the notion of geodesic distance on the Lie group of Bogoliubov transformations equipped with a right-invariant metric. We use the framework of the covariance matrix to compute circuit complexity between Gaussian states. We apply this framework to the free vector field in general dimensions where we compute the circuit complexity of the ground state of the Hamiltonian.
Abstract We investigate the first law of complexity proposed in Bernamonti et al (2019 Phys. Rev. Lett. 123 081601), i.e., the variation of complexity when the target state is perturbed, in more detail. Based on Nielsen’s geometric approach to quantum circuit complexity, we find the variation only depends on the end of the optimal circuit. We apply the first law to gain new insights into the quantum circuits and complexity models underlying holographic complexity. In particular, we examine the variation of the holographic complexity for both the complexity = action and complexity = volume conjectures in perturbing the AdS vacuum with coherent state excitations of a free scalar field. We also examine the variations of circuit complexity produced by the same excitations for the free scalar field theory in a fixed AdS background. In this case, our work extends the existing treatment of Gaussian coherent states to properly include the time dependence of the complexity variation. We comment on the similarities and differences of the holographic and QFT results.
Abstract We examine the circuit complexity of coherent states in a free scalar field theory, applying Nielsen’s geometric approach as in [1]. The complexity of the coherent states have the same UV divergences as the vacuum state complexity and so we consider the finite increase of the complexity of these states over the vacuum state. One observation is that generally, the optimal circuits introduce entanglement between the normal modes at intermediate stages even though our reference state and target states are not entangled in this basis. We also compare our results from Nielsen’s approach with those found using the Fubini-Study method of [2]. For general coherent states, we find that the complexities, as well as the optimal circuits, derived from these two approaches, are different.
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Abstract We consider circuit complexity in certain interacting scalar quantum field theories, mainly focusing on theϕ4theory. We work out the circuit complexity for evolving from a nearly Gaussian unentangled reference state to the entangled ground state of the theory. Our approach uses Nielsen’s geometric method, which translates into working out the geodesic equation arising from a certain cost functional. We present a general method, making use of integral transforms, to do the required lattice sums analytically and give explicit expressions for thed= 2,3 cases. Our method enables a study of circuit complexity in the epsilon expansion for the Wilson-Fisher fixed point. We find that with increasing dimensionality the circuit depth increases in the presence of theϕ4interaction eventually causing the perturbative calculation to breakdown. We discuss how circuit complexity relates with the renormalization group.
A bstract We study circuit complexity for free fermionic field theories and Gaussian states. Our definition of circuit complexity is based on the notion of geodesic distance on the Lie group of special orthogonal transformations equipped with a right-invariant metric. After analyzing the differences and similarities to bosonic circuit complexity, we develop a comprehensive mathematical framework to compute circuit complexity between arbitrary fermionic Gaussian states. We apply this framework to the free Dirac field in four dimensions where we compute the circuit complexity of the Dirac ground state with respect to several classes of spatially unentangled reference states. Moreover, we show that our methods can also be applied to compute the complexity of excited energy eigenstates of the free Dirac field. Finally, we discuss the relation of our results to alternative approaches based on the Fubini-Study metric, the relevance to holography and possible extensions.