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arXiv:1901.10502 · Physical Review Letters

Sub-ballistic Growth of Rényi Entropies due to Diffusion

Tibor Rakovszky, Frank Pollmann, Curt W. von Keyserlingk

Published Jun 25, 2019• 144 citations
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Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of quantum entanglement after a global quench and uncover a qualitative difference between the behavior of the von Neumann entropy and higher Rényi entropies. We argue that the latter generically grow sub-ballistically, as ∝sqrt[t], in systems with diffusive transport. We provide strong evidence for this in both a U(1) symmetric random circuit model and in a paradigmatic nonintegrable spin chain, where energy is the sole conserved quantity. We interpret our results as a consequence of local quantum fluctuations in conserved densities, whose behavior is controlled by diffusion, and use the random circuit model to derive an effective description. We also discuss the late-time behavior of the second Rényi entropy and show that it exhibits hydrodynamic tails with three distinct power laws occurring for different classes of initial states.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.122.250602

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In a recent paper (Commun. Phys. 3, 100) Znidaric studies the growth of higher Renyi entropies in diffusive systems and claims that they generically grow ballistically in time, except for spin-1/2 models in d=1 dimension. Here, we point out that the necessary conditions for sub-ballistic growth of Renyi entropies are in fact much more general, and apply to a large class of systems, including experimentally relevant ones in arbitrary dimension and with larger local Hilbert spaces.

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We investigate the dynamics of quantum entanglement after a global quench and uncover a qualitative difference between the behavior of the von Neumann entropy and higher Rényi entropies. We argue that the latter generically grow sub-ballistically, as ∝sqrt[t], in systems with diffusive transport. We provide strong evidence for this in both a U(1) symmetric random circuit model and in a paradigmatic nonintegrable spin chain, where energy is the sole conserved quantity. We interpret our results as a consequence of local quantum fluctuations in conserved densities, whose behavior is controlled by diffusion, and use the random circuit model to derive an effective description. We also discuss the late-time behavior of the second Rényi entropy and show that it exhibits hydrodynamic tails with three distinct power laws occurring for different classes of initial states.
Conservation laws and the associated hydrodynamic modes have important consequences on the growth of higher R\'enyi entropies in isolated quantum systems. It has been shown in various random unitary circuits and Hamiltonian systems that the dynamics of the R\'enyi entropies in the presence of a U(1) symmetry obey ${S}^{(n\ensuremath{\ge}2)}(t)\ensuremath{\propto}{t}^{1/z}$, where zzz is identified as the dynamical exponent characterizing transport of the conserved charges. Here, however, we demonstrate that this simple identification may not hold in certain quantum systems with kinetic constraints. In particular, we study two types of U(1)-symmetric quantum automaton circuits with XNOR (exclusive NOR) and Fredkin constraints, respectively. We find numerically that while spin transport in both models is subdiffusive, the second R\'enyi entropy grows diffusively in the XNOR model, and superdiffusively in the Fredkin model. For systems with the XNOR constraint, this distinction arises since the spin correlation function can be attributed to an emergent tracer dynamics of tagged particles, whereas the R\'enyi entropies are constrained by collective transport of the particles. Our results suggest that care must be taken when relating transport and entanglement entropy dynamics in generic quantum systems with conservation laws.
Recent works 1 , 2 argued that Rényi entropies S α with indices α > 1 exhibit a sub-ballistic, ∝t\propto \sqrt{t}∝t​ , growth in systems with diffusive transport. A subsequent work by Žnidarič 3 claims that such sub-ballistic growth occurs only in certain cases (in particular, d = 1 dimensional systems with q = 2 states per site) and is generically replaced by ballistic growth in the absence of further fine-tuning. Below, we try to make precise the conditions needed for diffusive (rather than ballistic) Rényi growth and argue that they apply to a much wider class of systems than what is suggested by Žnidarič 3 . In particular, the examples presented by Žnidarič that avoid diffusive growth do so because of the presence of additional non-conserved degrees of freedom, not merely their larger local Hilbert space.
The notion of operator growth in quantum systems furnishes a bridge between transport and the generation of entanglement between different parts of the system under quantum dynamics. We define a measure of operator growth in terms of subsystem operator Rényi entropy, which provides a state-independent measure of operator growth, unlike entanglement entropies, and the usual measures of operator growth like out-of-time-order correlators. We show that the subsystem operator Rényi entropy encodes both spatial and temporal information, and thus can directly connect to transport for a local operator related to a conserved quantity. We construct a unified Schwinger-Keldysh (SK) field theory formalism for the time evolution of operator Rényi entropy and entanglement entropies of initial pure states. We use the SK field theory to obtain the operator Rényi and state entanglement entropies in terms of infinite-temperature and vacuum Keldysh Green's functions, respectively, for non-interacting systems. We apply the method to explore the connection between operator and entanglement growth, and transport in non-interacting systems with quasiperiodic and random disorder, like the one- and two-dimensional Aubry-André models and the two-dimensional Anderson model. In particular, we show that the growth of subsystem operator Rényi entropy and state von Neumann and Rényi entanglement entropies can capture both ballistic and sub-ballistic transport behaviors, like diffusive and anomalous diffusive transport, as well as localization in these systems.
Symmetries shape the quantum-information dynamics of many-body systems, but their effect on nonstabilizerness, the resource complementary to entanglement, is less understood. We compute the stabilizer Rényi entropy, a measure of nonstabilizerness, in U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1)-symmetric one-dimensional random circuits. The disorder-averaged dynamics is captured by a four-replica tensor network, which we evaluate by S4S_4S4​-adapted infinite time-evolving block decimation (iTEBD) directly in the thermodynamic limit. Together with a hydrodynamic argument, our results identify a diffusive universality class for the late-time approach of nonstabilizerness to its random-state value, with the stabilizer Rényi entropy gap closing as 1/t1/t1/t. The same scaling is verified in an energy-conserving nonintegrable Ising chain. More broadly, our framework provides a hydrodynamic perspective on nonstabilizerness generation and offers insight into the design of approximate Haar-random states in Hamiltonian dynamics.