We study a generic and paradigmatic two-degrees-of-freedom system consisting of two coupled perturbed cat maps with different types of dynamics. The Wigner separability entropy (WSE)-equivalent to the operator space entanglement entropy-and the classical separability entropy (CSE) are used as measures of complexity. For the case where both degrees of freedom are hyperbolic, the maps are classically ergodic and the WSE and the CSE behave similarly, growing to higher values than in the doubly elliptic case. However, when one map is elliptic and the other hyperbolic, the WSE reaches the same asymptotic value than that of the doubly hyperbolic case but at a much slower rate. The CSE only follows the WSE for a few map steps, revealing that classical dynamical features are not enough to explain complexity growth.
We study a generic and paradigmatic two-degrees-of-freedom system consisting of two coupled perturbed cat maps with different types of dynamics. The Wigner separability entropy (WSE)-equivalent to the operator space entanglement entropy-and the classical separability entropy (CSE) are used as measures of complexity. For the case where both degrees of freedom are hyperbolic, the maps are classically ergodic and the WSE and the CSE behave similarly, growing to higher values than in the doubly elliptic case. However, when one map is elliptic and the other hyperbolic, the WSE reaches the same asymptotic value than that of the doubly hyperbolic case but at a much slower rate. The CSE only follows the WSE for a few map steps, revealing that classical dynamical features are not enough to explain complexity growth.
There is a remarkable interest in the study of out-of-time ordered correlators (OTOCs) that goes from many-body theory and high-energy physics to quantum chaos. In the latter case there is a special focus on the comparison with the traditional measures of quantum complexity such as the spectral statistics. The exponential growth has been verified for many paradigmatic maps and systems. However, less is known for multipartite cases. On the other hand, the recently introduced Wigner separability entropy (WSE) and its classical counterpart provide a complexity measure that treats equally quantum and classical distributions in phase space. We compare the behavior of these measures in a system consisting of two coupled and perturbed cat maps with different dynamics: Double hyperbolic, double elliptic, and mixed. In all cases, we find that the OTOCs and the WSE have essentially the same behavior, providing a complete characterization in generic bipartite systems and at the same time revealing them as very good measures of quantum complexity for phase-space distributions. Moreover, we establish a relation between both quantities by means of a recently proven theorem linking the second Rényi entropy and OTOCs.
We propose the Wigner separability entropy as a measure of complexity of a quantum state. This quantity measures the number of terms that effectively contribute to the Schmidt decomposition of the Wigner function with respect to a chosen phase-space decomposition. We prove that the Wigner separability entropy is equal to the operator space entanglement entropy, measuring entanglement in the space of operators, and, for pure states, twice the entropy of entanglement. The quantum to classical correspondence between the Wigner separability entropy and the separability entropy of the classical phase-space Liouville density is illustrated by means of numerical simulations of chaotic maps. In this way, the separability entropy emerges as an extremely broad complexity quantifier in both the classical and quantum realms.
We propose a phase-space Wigner harmonics entropy measure for many-body quantum dynamical complexity. This measure, which reduces to the well-known measure of complexity in classical systems and which is valid for both pure and mixed states in single-particle and many-body systems, takes into account the combined role of chaos and entanglement in the realm of quantum mechanics. The effectiveness of the measure is illustrated in the example of the Ising chain in a homogeneous tilted magnetic field. We provide numerical evidence that the multipartite entanglement generation leads to a linear increase in entropy until saturation in both integrable and chaotic regimes, so that in both cases the number of harmonics of the Wigner function grows exponentially with time. The entropy growth rate can be used to detect quantum phase transitions. The proposed entropy measure can also distinguish between integrable and chaotic many-body dynamics by means of the size of long-term fluctuations which become smaller when quantum chaos sets in.
The correspondence principle plays a fundamental role in quantum mechanics, which naturally leads us to inquire whether it is possible to find or determine close classical analogs of quantum states in phase space-a common meeting point to both classical and quantum density statistical descriptors. Here, this issue is tackled by investigating the behavior of classical analogs arising upon the removal of all interference traits displayed by the Wigner distribution functions associated with a given pure quantum state. Accordingly, the dynamical evolution of the linear and von Neumann entropies is numerically computed for a continuous-variable bipartite system, and compared with the corresponding classical counterparts, in the case of two quartic oscillators nonlinearly coupled under regular and chaos conditions. Three quantum states for the full system are considered: a Gaussian state, a cat state, and a Bell-type state. By comparing the quantum and classical entropy values, and particularly their trends, it is shown that, instead of entanglement production, such entropies rather provide us with information on the system (either quantum or classical) delocalization. This gradual loss of information translates into an increase in both the quantum and the classical realms, directly connected to the increase in the correlations between both parties' degrees of freedom which, in the quantum case, is commonly related to the production of entanglement.
We study the dynamical generation of entanglement for a two-body interacting system, starting from a separable coherent state. We show analytically that in the quasiclassical regime the entanglement growth rate can be simply computed by means of the underlying classical dynamics. Furthermore, this rate is given by the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy, which characterizes the dynamical complexity of classical motion. Our results, illustrated by numerical simulations on a model of coupled rotators, establish in the quasiclassical regime a link between the generation of entanglement, a purely quantum phenomenon, and classical complexity.
In this review we summarize and amplify recent investigations of coupled quantum dynamical systems with few degrees of freedom in the short-wavelength, semiclassical limit. Focusing on the correspondence between quantum and classical physics, we mathematically formulate and attempt to answer three fundamental questions. (i) How can one drive a small dynamical quantum system to behave classically? (ii) What determines the rate at which two single-particle quantum-mechanical subsystems become entangled when they interact? (iii) How does irreversibility occur in quantum systems with few degrees of freedom? These three questions are posed in the context of the quantum-classical correspondence for dynamical systems with few degrees of freedom, and we accordingly rely on two short-wavelength approximations to quantum mechanics to answer them: the trajectory-based semiclassical approach on the one hand, and random matrix theory on the other hand. We construct novel investigative procedures towards decoherence and the emergence of classicality out of quantumness in dynamical systems coupled to external degrees of freedom. In particular, we show how dynamical properties of chaotic classical systems, such as local exponential instability in phase space, also affects their quantum counterparts. For instance, it is often the case that the fidelity with which a quantum state is reconstructed after an imperfect time-reversal operation decays with the Lyapunov exponent of the corresponding classical dynamics. For related reasons, but perhaps more surprisingly, the rate at which two interacting quantum subsystems become entangled can also be governed by the subsystem's Lyapunov exponents. Our method allows us to differentiate quantum coherent effects (those related to phase interferences) from classical ones (those related to the necessarily extended envelope of quantal wavefunctions) at each stage in our investigations. This makes it clear that all occurrences of Lyapunov exponents we witness have a classical origin, although they require rather strong decoherence effects to be observed. We extensively rely on numerical experiments to illustrate our findings and briefly comment on possible extensions to more complex problems involving environments with many interacting dynamical systems, going beyond the uncoupled harmonic oscillators model of Caldeira and Leggett.