It is widely recognized that entanglement generation and dynamical chaos are intimately related in semiclassical models via the process of decoherence. In this paper, we propose a unifying framework which directly connects the bipartite and multipartite entanglement growth to the quantifiers of classical and quantum chaos. In the semiclassical regime, the dynamics of the von Neumann entanglement entropy, the spin squeezing, the quantum Fisher information, and the out-of-time-order square commutator are governed by the divergence of nearby phase-space trajectories via the local Lyapunov spectrum, as suggested by previous conjectures in the literature. General analytical predictions are confirmed by detailed numerical calculations for two paradigmatic models, relevant in atomic and optical experiments, which exhibit a regular-to-chaotic transition: the quantum kicked top and the Dicke model.
It is widely recognized that entanglement generation and dynamical chaos are intimately related in semiclassical models via the process of decoherence. In this paper, we propose a unifying framework which directly connects the bipartite and multipartite entanglement growth to the quantifiers of classical and quantum chaos. In the semiclassical regime, the dynamics of the von Neumann entanglement entropy, the spin squeezing, the quantum Fisher information, and the out-of-time-order square commutator are governed by the divergence of nearby phase-space trajectories via the local Lyapunov spectrum, as suggested by previous conjectures in the literature. General analytical predictions are confirmed by detailed numerical calculations for two paradigmatic models, relevant in atomic and optical experiments, which exhibit a regular-to-chaotic transition: the quantum kicked top and the Dicke model.
We present a method to calculate an upper bound on the generation of entanglement in any spin system using the Fannes-Audenaert inequality for the von Neumann entropy. Our method not only is useful for efficiently estimating entanglement, but also shows that entanglement generation depends on the distance of the quantum states of the system from corresponding minimum-uncertainty spin-coherent states (SCSs). We illustrate our method using a quantum kicked top model and show that our upper bound is a very good estimator for entanglement generated in both regular and chaotic regions. In a deep quantum regime, the upper bound on entanglement can be high in both regular and chaotic regions, while in the semiclassical regime, the bound is higher in chaotic regions where the quantum states diverge from the corresponding SCSs. Our analysis thus explains previous studies and clarifies the relationship between chaos and entanglement.
Quantum chaos, a phenomenon that began to be studied in the last century, still does not have a rigorous understanding. By virtue of the correspondence principle, the properties of the system that lead to chaotic dynamics at the classical level must also be present in the underlying quantum system. In the classical case, the exponential divergence of nearby trajectories in time is described in terms of the Lyapunov exponent. However, in the quantum case, a similar description of chaos is, strictly speaking, impossible due to the absence of trajectories. There are different approaches to remedy this situation, but the universal criterion of quantum chaos is absent. We propose a quantum chaos definition in a manner similar to the classical one using decoherent histories as a quantum analog of trajectories. For this purpose, we consider the model of an open quantum kicked top interacting with the environment, which is a bosonic bath, and illustrate this idea. Here, the environment plays the role of a trajectory-recording device. For the kicked-top model at the classical level, depending on the kick strength, crossover occurs between the integrable and chaotic regimes. We show that for such a model, the production of entropy of decoherent histories is radically different in integrable and chaotic regimes. Thus, the entropy of an ensemble of quantum trajectories can be used as a signature of quantum chaos.
Quantum sensors driven into the quantum chaotic regime can have dramatically enhanced sensitivity, which, however, depends intricately on the details of the underlying classical phase space. Here, we develop an accurate semiclassical approach that provides direct and efficient access to the phase-space-resolved quantum Fisher information (QFI), the central quantity that quantifies the ultimate achievable sensitivity. This approximation reveals, in very concrete terms, that the QFI is large whenever a specific dynamical quantity tied to the sensing parameter displays a large variance over the course of the corresponding classical time evolution. Applied to a paradigmatic system of quantum chaos, the kicked top, we show that the semiclassical description is accurate already for modest quantum numbers, i.e., deep in the quantum regime, and it extends seamlessly to very high quantum numbers that are beyond the reach of other methods.
The effect of a large environment on a finite-size quantum mechanical system is two-fold: It brings dissipation, but also fluctuations of thermal and quantum origin. While dissipation tends to stabilize the dynamics, we question if and how environmental quantum fluctuations can generate chaos in an otherwise classically non-chaotic system. We work out a paradigmatic model of quantum optics: the dissipative Dicke model, where a large spin interacts with a dissipative harmonic mode. We dial in the classical/quantum correspondence by working in the semiclassical regime at large but finite spin. We demonstrate that, starting from a classically regular phase space in the superradiant regime, quantum noise can generate a strange attractor with fractal dimension and a positive Lyapunov exponent. We unveil the deep connection with shear-induced chaos that was recently developed in the mathematical community.
This dissertation sets out to examine some fundamental open questions in quantum physics regarding quantum-classical correspondence in regular versus chaotic systems. Specifically, we study these questions using approaches in quantum information science in an experimentally realized textbook model of quantum chaos - the quantum kicked top (QKT). \n \nThe effect of classical chaos on the generation of entanglement in spin systems has been a field of active research for a couple of decades. Whether high entanglement in these systems is a hallmark of chaos or not remains a widely debated topic. We explain the connection between entanglement and chaos in spin systems and resolve previous conflicting results. The previous studies have mostly drawn conclusions from numerical work on a few initial states in regular versus chaotic regions. We instead focus on stable and unstable periodic orbits because chaos emerges around unstable periodic orbits. We first propose a new set of criteria for determining whether quantum evolution will correspond to the classical trajectory in a localized manner at stable periodic orbits in periodically driven systems. These criteria can be used to calculate the quantum numbers that will lead to quantum-classical correspondence even in a deep quantum regime, and thus to quantify the well-known Bohr correspondence principle. Next, we analytically show a direct connection between entanglement generation and a measure of delocalization of a quantum state in spin systems. More concretely, we describe a method to calculate an upper bound on entanglement generation in any bipartition of spin systems, where the upper bound is a function of trace distance between the evolved state and the most localized classical-like separable states. This method along with our criteria for localized evolution enables us to explain the behaviour of entanglement in both deep quantum and semiclassical regimes for regular as well as chaotic regions. Hence, our analysis resolves the long-standing debates regarding the connection between classical chaos and quantum entanglement in deep quantum and semiclassical regimes. \n \nIn addition to the study of entanglement, we perform the first study of nonlocality, and the effect of chaos on its generation in the QKT. Since nonlocality and entanglement are inequivalent quantum resources, the effect of chaos on nonlocality merits an explicit study. Violations of Bell inequalities in the presence of spacelike separation among the subsystems imply nonlocality - meaning nonlocal correlations between subsystems of the total spin system. We show that the QKT evolution can lead to states that violate multiqubit Bell inequalities and hence provides a deterministic method to prepare nonlocal quantum states. Our numerical results suggest a correlation between delocalized evolution of a pure quantum state and generation of nonlocality in the quantum state. We further demonstrate that dynamical tunnelling - a classically forbidden phenomenon - in the QKT leads to the generation of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ)-like states for even numbers of qubits. We analytically prove that these states are maximally nonlocal. On the other hand, we numerically show that any reduced state of the QKT obtained by tracing out a subsystem of the total spin system does not violate Bell inequalities. We provide an analytical explanation of the numerical results for 2−qubit reduced states by formulating and proving two general theorems regarding 2−qubit Bell inequalities. These theorems imply that any 2−qubit mixed state having a symmetric extension or symmetric purification cannot violate the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality. This highlights fundamental connections between two important and distinct concepts in quantum information science - Bell inequalities and symmetric extension of quantum states. \n \nApart from providing deeper insights into the fundamental questions of quantum-classical correspondence and new approaches to analyze quantum chaos, the methods developed in this thesis can be used to design quantum systems that can efficiently generate entanglement and nonlocality. Thus, our results could have interesting applications in quantum computing and quantum information science.
Chaos in classical systems can be characterized by Lyapunov exponents that measure the exponential divergence of nearby trajectories, but directly extending this framework to quantum mechanics has been a persistent challenge. The wavelike nature of quantum states and the non-commutative geometry of quantum phase space obstruct a straightforward generalization of classical chaos theory. Here we develop a rigorous approach to quantum chaos by leveraging quantum optimal transport theory, which provides the missing geometric foundation for measuring distances between extended quantum distributions. We define quantum Lyapunov exponents that naturally avoid divergences encountered when naïvely generalizing classical exponents, and show that in the semiclassical limit they recover the classical global expansion rate, and hence the usual maximal Lyapunov exponent when they coincide. Our framework provides a tight connection between the divergence of classical trajectories and semiclassical phase space evolution, and additionally clarifies the role of out-of-time-order correlators as diagnostics of quantum chaos. These results establish quantum optimal transport as a unifying mathematical foundation for quantum chaos theory, providing new tools to characterize dynamical behavior across the full range of quantum dynamics from simple few-body models to complex many-body systems.