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arXiv:2112.10710 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Directional scrambling of quantum information in helical multiferroics

Michael Sekania, Marius Melz, Nicholas Sedlmayr, S. K. Mishra, Jamal Berakdar

Published Dec 17, 2021• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Local excitations as carriers of quantum information spread out in the system in ways governed by the underlying interaction and symmetry. Understanding this phenomenon, also called quantum scrambling, is a prerequisite for employing interacting systems for quantum information processing. The character and direction dependence of quantum scrambling can be inferred from the out-of-time-ordered commutators (OTOCs) containing information on correlation buildup and entanglement spreading. Employing OTOC, we study and quantify the directionality of quantum information propagation in oxide-based helical spin systems hosting a spin-driven ferroelectric order. In these systems, magnetoelectricity permits the spin dynamics and associated information content to be controlled by an electric field coupled to the emergent ferroelectric order. We show that topologically nontrivial quantum phases, such as chiral or helical spin ordering, allow for electric-field controlled anisotropic scrambling and a direction-dependent buildup of quantum correlations. Based on general symmetry considerations, we find that starting from a pure state (e.g., the ground state) or a finite temperature state is essential for observing directional asymmetry in scrambling. In the systematic numerical studies of OTOC on finite-size helical multiferroic chains, we quantify the directional asymmetry of the scrambling and verify the conjectured form of the OTOC around the ballistic wavefront. The obtained direction-dependent butterfly velocity ${v}_{\mathrm{B}}(\mathbf{n})$ provides information on the speed of the ballistic wavefront. In general, our calculations show an early time power-law behavior of OTOC, as expected from an analytic expansion for small times. The long-time behavior of OTOC reveals the importance of (non)integrability of the underlying Hamiltonian as well as the implications of conserved quantities such as the $z$ projection of the total spin. The results point to the potential of spin-driven ferroelectric materials for the use in solid-state-based quantum information processing.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.104.224421

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Local excitations as carriers of quantum information spread out in the system in ways governed by the underlying interaction and symmetry. Understanding this phenomenon, also called quantum scrambling, is a prerequisite for employing interacting systems for quantum information processing. The character and direction dependence of quantum scrambling can be inferred from the out-of-time-ordered commutators (OTOCs) containing information on correlation buildup and entanglement spreading. Employing OTOC, we study and quantify the directionality of quantum information propagation in oxide-based helical spin systems hosting a spin-driven ferroelectric order. In these systems, magnetoelectricity permits the spin dynamics and associated information content to be controlled by an electric field coupled to the emergent ferroelectric order. We show that topologically nontrivial quantum phases, such as chiral or helical spin ordering, allow for electric-field controlled anisotropic scrambling and a direction-dependent buildup of quantum correlations. Based on general symmetry considerations, we find that starting from a pure state (e.g., the ground state) or a finite temperature state is essential for observing directional asymmetry in scrambling. In the systematic numerical studies of OTOC on finite-size helical multiferroic chains, we quantify the directional asymmetry of the scrambling and verify the conjectured form of the OTOC around the ballistic wavefront. The obtained direction-dependent butterfly velocity vB(n){v}_{\mathrm{B}}(\mathbf{n})vB​(n) provides information on the speed of the ballistic wavefront. In general, our calculations show an early time power-law behavior of OTOC, as expected from an analytic expansion for small times. The long-time behavior of OTOC reveals the importance of (non)integrability of the underlying Hamiltonian as well as the implications of conserved quantities such as the zzz projection of the total spin. The results point to the potential of spin-driven ferroelectric materials for the use in solid-state-based quantum information processing.
A closed quantum system never forgets its initial state, but the encoded information can get scrambled and become inaccessible without measuring a large fraction of all the system degrees of freedom. This scrambling can be diagnosed by studying the spatial spreading of initially local operators under the Heisenberg time evolution, and the decay of the out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOC). What insights can OTOCs provide to understand the dynamics of quantum many-body systems? What are the characteristic behaviors of OTOCs during the time evolution? How is information scrambling affected by the dissipation in open quantum many-body systems? We first study slow scrambling in many-body localized systems via calculating various correlators, two-point retarded correlators and OTOCs. Comparing with retarded correlators, OTOCs provide more information about the dynamics. We find that disorder slows and partially halts the onset of information scrambling. Instead of ballistic spreading, propagation of information forms a logarithmic light cone. Next, we study the finite-size scaling of OTOCs at late times in generic thermalizing quantum many-body systems. When energy is conserved, the late-time saturation value of the OTOC of generic traceless local operators scales as an inverse polynomial in the system size. This is in contrast to the inverse exponential scaling expected for chaotic dynamics without energy conservation. We also study information scrambling in open quantum many-body systems. We define a dissipative version of OTOC and study its behaviors in a prototypical chaotic quantum chain with dissipation. We find that dissipation leads to not only the overall decay of the scrambled information due to leaking, but also structural changes so that the information light cone can only reach a finite distance even when the effect of overall decay is removed. Finally, we construct a family of local Hamiltonians for understanding the asymmetric information scrambling. Our models live on a one-dimensional lattice and exhibit asymmetric butterfly light cone between the left and right spatial directions.
Magnetoelectric coupling in helical multiferroics allows us to steer spin order with electric fields. Here we show theoretically that in a helical multiferroic chain quantum information processing as well as quantum phases are highly sensitive to electric (EEE) field. Applying EEE field, the quantum state transfer fidelity can be increased and made directionally dependent. We also show that EEE field transforms the spin-density-wave/nematic or multipolar phases of a frustrated ferromagnetic spin$\text{\ensuremath{-}}\frac{1}{2}$ chain in chiral phase with a strong magnetoelectric coupling. We find sharp reorganization of the entanglement spectrum as well as a large enhancement of fidelity susceptibility at Ising quantum phase transition from nematic to chiral states driven by electric field. These findings point to a tool for quantum information with low power consumption.
We investigate the integrability-to-chaos transition and information scrambling in Ising spin networks via a graph-theoretic formulation. Modeling spins as vertices and interactions as edges encoded by adjacency matrices across path, Erdos-Renyi, and Watts-Strogatz topologies, we demonstrate that long-range couplings and heterogeneous degree distributions markedly accelerate quantum information propagation. The Hamiltonian comprises local and normalized non-local interactions; tuning the non-local coupling and field heterogeneity drives integrability breaking. To quantify scrambling, we employ bipartite mutual and tripartite information. Increasing non-local interactions drives tripartite information to large negative values, signaling deep information scrambling. The squared commutators constructed from out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) exhibit early-time exponential growth; equivalently, the OTOC four-point functions themselves decay exponentially, yielding quantum Lyapunov exponents that scale systematically with parameters governing the chaotic regime. Complementing this, Krylov complexity reveals rapid operator growth in the chaotic phase, synchronizing with OTOC and mutual information dynamics. Spectrally, the transition manifests as a shift from Poissonian to Wigner-Dyson level spacing statistics. The spectral form factor (SFF) exhibits the characteristic slope-dip-ramp-plateau structure, enabling the extraction of Thouless and Heisenberg times. Crucially, a reduced Thouless time strongly correlates with accelerated information and operator scrambling. Ultimately, this work establishes a unified framework bridging network topology with information-theoretic, operator, and spectral diagnostics, offering insights into thermalization and non-equilibrium dynamics in quantum many-body systems.
Scrambling, the delocalization of initially localized quantum information, is commonly characterized by the out-of-time ordered correlator (OTOC). Employing the OTOC-Renyi-2 entropy theorem we derive a quantum speed limit for the OTOC, which sets an lower bound for the rate with which information can be scrambled. This bound becomes particularly tractable by describing the scrambling of information in a closed quantum system as an effective decoherence process of an open system interacting with an environment. We prove that decay of the OTOC can be bounded by the strength of the system-environment coupling and two-point environmental correlation functions. We validate our analytic bound numerically using the non-integrable transverse field Ising model. Our results provide a universal and model-agnostic quantitative framework for understanding the dynamical limits of information spreading across quantum many-body physics, condensed matter, and engineered quantum platforms.
Inhomogeneous systems have become increasingly relevant in experimentally engineered quantum many-body systems, where spatially varying interaction strengths can significantly influence nonequilibrium dynamics. Motivated by this, we numerically study the out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) in inhomogeneous XXZ spin chains. Using two types of spatially varying interaction profiles, namely, linear-gradient and stepwise profiles, we show that spatial inhomogeneity in the interactions can induce pronounced asymmetry in information scrambling, with OTOC operators located at different sites exhibiting distinct dynamical behavior. In particular, OTOCs associated with the strongly interacting side exhibit suppressed scrambling compared to those associated with the weakly interacting side, with the difference becoming more pronounced when the interaction strengths differ significantly. To elucidate the origin of the long-time saturation of OTOCs, we analyze the diagonal matrix elements of the OTOC observables in the energy eigenbasis and their overlap with the Hamiltonian, which explicitly incorporates the spatial interaction profile. The resulting analytical expression is consistent with the numerical results. Finally, we extend our analysis to periodically driven inhomogeneous spin chains and show that the interaction-gradient-induced asymmetry persists under periodic driving.
Abstract Quantum link models (QLMs) serve as experimentally accessible platforms for studying lattice gauge theories with finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. In this work, we investigate information scrambling in the partially confined phase of a spin-1 quantum link model by calculating the dynamics of out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) and entanglement entropy. We observe that, in the partially confined phase, information scrambling exhibits significant asymmetry, manifested as the unidirectional propagation of both OTOCs and entanglement entropy. This phenomenon stands in stark contrast to the isotropic spreading observed in the deconfined phase and the localization characteristic of the confined phase. Furthermore, the simultaneous occurrence of the unidirectional propagation of both OTOCs and entanglement entropy, together with the θ -induced asymmetric excitation propagation, reveals a direct connection between information scrambling and charge confinement.