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arXiv:2006.05046 · Physical Review A

Thermalization in a Bose-Hubbard dimer with modulated tunneling

R. A. Kidd, Arghavan Safavi-Naini, Joel Frederick Corney

Published Aug 27, 2020• 14 citations
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Abstract

The periodically modulated Bose-Hubbard dimer model offers an experimentally realizable and highly tunable platform for observing the scrambling of quantum information and the apparent thermalization of isolated, interacting quantum many-body systems. In this work we apply fidelity out-of-time correlators (FOTOCs) to establish connections between the thermalization in the Floquet system, the exponential growth of FOTOCs as quantified by a nonzero quantum Lyapunov exponent, and the underlying classical transition from regular to chaotic dynamics in the dimer. Moreover, we demonstrate that a nonzero quantum Lyapunov exponent can also be inferred from measures quantifying the delocalization of the Floquet modes of the system such as the Shannon entropy, which approaches unity if the system thermalizes to the periodic Gibbs ensemble prediction.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.102.023330

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The periodically modulated Bose-Hubbard dimer model offers an experimentally realizable and highly tunable platform for observing the scrambling of quantum information and the apparent thermalization of isolated, interacting quantum many-body systems. In this work we apply fidelity out-of-time correlators (FOTOCs) to establish connections between the thermalization in the Floquet system, the exponential growth of FOTOCs as quantified by a nonzero quantum Lyapunov exponent, and the underlying classical transition from regular to chaotic dynamics in the dimer. Moreover, we demonstrate that a nonzero quantum Lyapunov exponent can also be inferred from measures quantifying the delocalization of the Floquet modes of the system such as the Shannon entropy, which approaches unity if the system thermalizes to the periodic Gibbs ensemble prediction.
Scrambling is the process by which information stored in local degrees of freedom spreads over the many-body degrees of freedom of a quantum system, becoming inaccessible to local probes and apparently lost. Scrambling and entanglement can reconcile seemingly unrelated behaviors including thermalization of isolated quantum systems and information loss in black holes. Here, we demonstrate that fidelity out-of-time-order correlators (FOTOCs) can elucidate connections between scrambling, entanglement, ergodicity and quantum chaos (butterfly effect). We compute FOTOCs for the paradigmatic Dicke model, and show they can measure subsystem Rényi entropies and inform about quantum thermalization. Moreover, we illustrate why FOTOCs give access to a simple relation between quantum and classical Lyapunov exponents in a chaotic system without finite-size effects. Our results open a path to experimental use FOTOCs to explore scrambling, bounds on quantum information processing and investigation of black hole analogs in controllable quantum systems.
Identifying quantum chaos in Floquet systems with mixed classical phase spaces requires robust experimentally accessible signatures. We investigate the time-averaged quantum Fisher information (QFI) and the fidelity out-of-time-ordered correlator (FOTOC) of continuous periodically driven systems. We uncover two distinct power-law scalings of the time-averaged QFI with respect to system size: the standard quantum limit and the Heisenberg limit. These scalings correspond to initial states localized in the regular and chaotic regions of the classical phase space, respectively. Remarkably, we show that the time-averaged FOTOC can accurately identify the transition from mixed phase space to fully chaotic sea (at a critical driving strength Bx≈5.3) as verified by the maximum Lyapunov exponent. The results suggest that both time-averaged QFI and FOTOC can be used as excellent quantum signatures for probing mixed phase-space structures and our adopted protocol for measuring the FOTOC eliminates the need for time-reversal operations. This work establishes a practical framework for investigating quantum chaos in Floquet systems, bridging theoretical insights with experimental applications.
We report on the experimental implementation of tunable occupation-dependent tunneling in a Bose-Hubbard system of ultracold atoms via time-periodic modulation of the on-site interaction energy. The tunneling rate is inferred from a time-resolved measurement of the lattice site occupation after a quantum quench. We demonstrate coherent control of the tunneling dynamics in the correlated many-body system, including full suppression of tunneling as predicted within the framework of Floquet theory. We find that the tunneling rate explicitly depends on the atom number difference in neighboring lattice sites. Our results may open up ways to realize artificial gauge fields that feature density dependence with ultracold atoms.
Fast scrambling of quantum correlations, reflected by the exponential growth of out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) on short pre-Ehrenfest time scales, is commonly considered as a major quantum signature of unstable dynamics in quantum systems with a classical limit. In two recent works [Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 160401 (2019)0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.123.160401] and [Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 140602 (2020)10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.140602], a significant difference in the scrambling rate of integrable (many-body) systems was observed, depending on the initial state being semiclassically localized around unstable fixed points or fully delocalized (infinite temperature). Specifically, the quantum Lyapunov exponent λ_{q} quantifying the OTOC growth is given, respectively, by λ_{q}=2λ_{s} or λ_{q}=λ_{s} in terms of the stability exponent λ_{s} of the hyperbolic fixed point. Here we show that a wave packet, initially localized around this fixed point, features a distinct dynamical transition between these two regions. We present an analytical semiclassical approach providing a physical picture of this phenomenon, and support our findings by extensive numerical simulations in the whole parameter range of locally unstable dynamics of a Bose-Hubbard dimer. Our results suggest that the existence of this crossover is a hallmark of unstable separatrix dynamics in integrable systems, thus opening the possibility to distinguish the latter, on the basis of this particular observable, from genuine chaotic dynamics generally featuring uniform exponential growth of the OTOC.
Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) have proven to be a useful tool for studying thermalization in quantum systems. In particular, the exponential growth of OTOCS, or scrambling, is sometimes taken as an indicator of chaos in quantum systems, despite the fact that saddle points in integrable systems can also drive rapid growth in OTOCs. By analyzing the Dicke model and a driven Bose-Hubbard dimer, we demonstrate that the OTOC growth driven by chaos can, nonetheless, be distinguished from that driven by saddle points through the long-term behavior. Besides quantitative differences in the long-term average, the saddle point gives rise to large oscillations not observed in the chaotic case. The differences are also highlighted by entanglement entropy, which in the chaotic-driven dimer matches a Page curve prediction. These results illustrate additional markers that can be used to distinguish chaotic behavior in quantum systems, beyond the initial exponential growth in OTOCs.
Systems of interacting bosons in double-well potentials, modeled by two-site Bose-Hubbard models, are of significant theoretical and experimental interest and attracted intensive studies in contexts ranging from many-body physics and quantum dynamics to the onset of quantum chaos. In this work we systematically study a kicked two-site Bose-Hubbard model (Bose-Hubbard dimer) with the on-site potential difference being periodically modulated. Our model can be equivalently represented as a kicked Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model and thus displays different dynamical behaviors from the kicked-top model. By analyzing spectral statistics of Floquet operator, we unveil that the system undergoes a transition from regularity to chaos with increasing the interaction strength. Then based on semiclassical approximation and the analysis of R\'enyi entropy of coherent states in the basis of Floquet operator eigenstates, we reveal the local chaotic features of our model, which indicate the existence of integrable islands even in the deep chaotic regime. The semiclassical analysis also suggests that the system in chaotic regime may display different dynamical behavior depending on the choice of initial states. Finally, we demonstrate that dynamical signatures of chaos can be manifested by studying dynamical evolution of local operators and out-of-time-order correlation function as well as the entanglement entropy. Our numerical results exhibit the richness of dynamics of the kicked Bose-Hubbard dimer in both regular and chaotic regimes as the initial states are chosen as coherent spin states located in different locations of phase space.