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arXiv:1805.08215 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Fast scrambling on sparse graphs

Gregory S. Bentsen, Yingfei Gu, Andrew Lucas

Published Mar 21, 2019• 69 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Given a quantum many-body system with few-body interactions, how rapidly can quantum information be hidden during time evolution? The fast-scrambling conjecture is that the time to thoroughly mix information among N degrees of freedom grows at least logarithmically in N. We derive this inequality for generic quantum systems at infinite temperature, bounding the scrambling time by a finite decay time of local quantum correlations at late times. Using Lieb-Robinson bounds, generalized Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models, and random unitary circuits, we propose that a logarithmic scrambling time can be achieved in most quantum systems with sparse connectivity. These models also elucidate how quantum chaos is not universally related to scrambling: We construct random few-body circuits with infinite Lyapunov exponent but logarithmic scrambling time. We discuss analogies between quantum models on graphs and quantum black holes and suggest methods to experimentally study scrambling with as many as 100 sparsely connected quantum degrees of freedom.

DOI
10.1073/pnas.1811033116

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Given a quantum many-body system with few-body interactions, how rapidly can quantum information be hidden during time evolution? The fast-scrambling conjecture is that the time to thoroughly mix information among N degrees of freedom grows at least logarithmically in N. We derive this inequality for generic quantum systems at infinite temperature, bounding the scrambling time by a finite decay time of local quantum correlations at late times. Using Lieb-Robinson bounds, generalized Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models, and random unitary circuits, we propose that a logarithmic scrambling time can be achieved in most quantum systems with sparse connectivity. These models also elucidate how quantum chaos is not universally related to scrambling: We construct random few-body circuits with infinite Lyapunov exponent but logarithmic scrambling time. We discuss analogies between quantum models on graphs and quantum black holes and suggest methods to experimentally study scrambling with as many as 100 sparsely connected quantum degrees of freedom.
Many proposed quantum mechanical models of black holes include highly nonlocal interactions.The time required for thermalization to occur in such models should reflect the relaxation times associated with classical black holes in general relativity.Moreover, the time required for a particularly strong form of thermalization to occur, sometimes known as scrambling, determines the time scale on which black holes should start to release information.It has been conjectured that black holes scramble in a time logarithmic in their entropy, and that no system in nature can scramble faster.In this article, we address the conjecture from two directions.First, we exhibit two examples of systems that do indeed scramble in logarithmic time: Brownian quantum circuits and the antiferromagnetic Ising model on a sparse random graph.Unfortunately, both fail to be truly ideal fast scramblers for reasons we discuss.Second, we use Lieb-Robinson techniques to prove a logarithmic lower bound on the scrambling time of systems with finite norm terms in their Hamiltonian.The bound holds in spite of any nonlocal structure in the Hamiltonian, which might permit every degree of freedom to interact directly with every other one.
We prove that the time required for sustained information scrambling in any Hamiltonian quantum system is universally at least logarithmic in the entanglement entropy of scrambled states. This addresses two foundational problems in nonequilibrium quantum dynamics. (1) It sets the earliest possible time for the applicability of equilibrium statistical mechanics in a quantum system coupled to a bath at a finite temperature. (2) It proves a version of the fast scrambling conjecture, originally motivated in models associated with black holes, as a fundamental property of quantum mechanics itself. Our result builds on a refinement of the energy-time uncertainty principle in terms of the infinite temperature spectral form factor in quantum chaos. We generalize this formulation to arbitrary initial states of the bath, including finite temperature states, by mapping Hamiltonian dynamics with any initial state to nonunitary dynamics at infinite temperature. A regularized spectral form factor emerges naturally from this procedure, whose decay is universally constrained by analyticity in complex time. This establishes an exact speed limit on information scrambling by the most general quantum mechanical Hamiltonian without any restrictions on locality or the nature of interactions.
Information scrambling is a hallmark of quantum chaos and thermalization in isolated quantum many-body systems. We investigate scrambling dynamics in the all-to-all interacting spin Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK)-qqq model using both pure- and mixed-state entanglement measures. We show that von-Neumann and Rényi entropies exhibit rapid growth followed by saturation near Haar-random values, signaling efficient scrambling. The scrambling rate reveals a nontrivial dependence on the interaction order, system size, and Hamiltonian scaling. We further employ mixed-state entanglement as a powerful probe of information scrambling. We numerically find a universal relation between the Rényi-1/2 mutual information and entanglement negativity for minimal interaction order in the early growth regime. Furthermore, entanglement negativity displays a Page-curve-like behavior under unequal subsystem partitioning, characterized by the birth, spread, and eventual death of quantum correlations. Our results provide a generic description of information scrambling using entanglement dynamics in all-to-all interacting spin systems with multi-body interactions.
Is there a quantum many-body system that scrambles information as fast as a black hole? The Sachev-Ye-Kitaev model can saturate the conjectured bound for chaos, but it requires random all-to-all couplings of Majorana fermions that are hard to realize in experiments. Here we examine a quantum spin model of randomly oriented dipoles where the spin exchange is governed by dipole-dipole interactions. The model is inspired by recent experiments on dipolar spin systems of magnetic atoms, dipolar molecules, and nitrogen-vacancy centers. We map out the phase diagram of this model by computing the energy-level statistics, spectral form factor, and out-of-time-order correlation (OTOC) functions. We find a broad regime of many-body chaos where the energy levels obey Wigner-Dyson statistics and the OTOC shows distinctive behaviors at different times: Its early-time dynamics is characterized by an exponential growth, while the approach to its saturated value at late times obeys a power law. The temperature scaling of the Lyapunov exponent ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{L}$ shows that while it is well below the conjectured bound $2\ensuremath{\pi}T$ at high temperatures, ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{L}$ approaches the bound at low temperatures and for large number of spins.
Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) can be used to probe how quickly a quantum system scrambles information when the initial conditions of the dynamics are changed. In sufficiently large quantum systems, one can extract from the OTOC the quantum analog of the Lyapunov coefficient that describes the timescale on which a classical chaotic system becomes scrambled. OTOCs have been applied only to a very limited number of toy models, such as the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model connected with black hole information scrambling, but they could find much wider applicability for information scrambling in quantum systems that allow comparison with experiments. The vibrations of polyatomic molecules are known to undergo a transition from regular dynamics at low energy to facile energy flow at sufficiently high energy. Molecules therefore represent ideal quantum systems to study scrambling in many-body systems of moderate size (here 6 to 36 degrees of freedoms). By computing quantum OTOCs and their classical counterparts we quantify how information becomes ``scrambled'' quantum mechanically in molecular systems. Between early ``ballistic'' dynamics, and late ``saturation'' of the OTOC when the full density of states is explored, there is indeed a regime where a quantum Lyapunov coefficient can be defined for all molecules in this study. Comparison with experimental rate data shows that slow scrambling as measured by the OTOC can reach the timescale of molecular reaction dynamics. Even for the smallest molecules we discuss, the Maldacena bound remains satisfied by regularized OTOCs, but not by unregularized OTOCs, highlighting that the former are more useful for discussing information scrambling in this type of moderate-size quantum system.
Random transformations are typically good at "scrambling" information. Specifically, in the quantum setting, scrambling usually refers to the process of mapping most initial pure product states under a unitary transformation to states which are macroscopically entangled, in the sense of being close to completely mixed on most subsystems containing a fraction fn of all n particles for some constant f. While the term scrambling is used in the context of the black hole information paradox, scrambling is related to problems involving decoupling in general, and to the question of how large isolated many-body systems reach local thermal equilibrium under their own unitary dynamics. Here, we study the speed at which various notions of scrambling/decoupling occur in a simplified but natural model of random two-particle interactions: random quantum circuits. For a circuit representing the dynamics generated by a local Hamiltonian, the depth of the circuit corresponds to time. Thus, we consider the depth of these circuits and we are typically interested in what can be done in a depth that is sublinear or even logarithmic in the size of the system. We resolve an outstanding conjecture raised in the context of the black hole information paradox with respect to the depth at which a typical quantum circuit generates an entanglement assisted encoding against the erasure channel. In addition, we prove that typical quantum circuits of poly(log n) depth satisfy a stronger notion of scrambling and can be used to encode alpha n qubits into n qubits so that up to beta n errors can be corrected, for some constants alpha, beta > 0.