We investigate the emergence of different effective geometries in stochastic Clifford circuits with sparse coupling. By changing the probability distribution for choosing two-site gates as a function of distance, we generate sparse interactions that either decay or grow with distance as a function of a single tunable parameter. Tuning this parameter reveals three distinct regimes of geometry for the spreading of correlations and growth of entanglement in the system. We observe linear geometry for short-range interactions, treelike geometry on a sparse coupling graph for long-range interactions, and an intermediate fast scrambling regime at the crossover point between the linear and treelike geometries. This transition in geometry is revealed in calculations of the subsystem entanglement entropy and tripartite mutual information. We also study emergent lightcones that govern these effective geometries by teleporting a single qubit of information from an input qubit to an output qubit. These tools help to analyze distinct geometries arising in dynamics and correlation spreading in quantum many-body systems.
We investigate the emergence of different effective geometries in stochastic Clifford circuits with sparse coupling. By changing the probability distribution for choosing two-site gates as a function of distance, we generate sparse interactions that either decay or grow with distance as a function of a single tunable parameter. Tuning this parameter reveals three distinct regimes of geometry for the spreading of correlations and growth of entanglement in the system. We observe linear geometry for short-range interactions, treelike geometry on a sparse coupling graph for long-range interactions, and an intermediate fast scrambling regime at the crossover point between the linear and treelike geometries. This transition in geometry is revealed in calculations of the subsystem entanglement entropy and tripartite mutual information. We also study emergent lightcones that govern these effective geometries by teleporting a single qubit of information from an input qubit to an output qubit. These tools help to analyze distinct geometries arising in dynamics and correlation spreading in quantum many-body systems.
In a fast-scrambling many-body quantum system, information is spread and entanglement is built up on a time scale that grows logarithmically with the system size.This is of fundamental interest in understanding the dynamics of many-body systems, as well as in efficiently producing entangled resource states and error-correcting codes.In this work, we identify a dynamical transition marking the onset of scrambling in quantum circuits with different levels of long-range connectivity.In particular, we show that as a function of the interaction range for circuits of different structures, the tripartite mutual information exhibits a scaling collapse around a critical point between two clearly defined regimes of different dynamical behavior.We study this transition analytically in a related long-range Brownian-circuit model and show how the transition can be mapped onto the statistical mechanics of a long-range Ising model in a particular region of parameter space.This mapping predicts mean-field critical exponents ν = -1/(1 + s c ), which are consistent with the critical exponents extracted from Clifford-circuit numerics.In addition to systems with conventional power-law interactions, we identify the same phenomenon in deterministic sparse circuits that can be realized in experiments with neutral-atom arrays.
Quantum error-correcting codes on graph geometries beyond regular euclidean lattices have emerged as a promising route toward robust quantum information processing. A major challenge in quantum error correction is the trade-off between favorable properties of codes constructed in high dimensionality and the need for locality in practical implementations on near-term hardware. Sparse intermediate geometries may combine the advantages of both, but how their structure governs quantum information dynamics and code performance remains unclear. Here we show that the spectral dimension ds, defined from the low-energy spectrum of the graph Laplacian, is the universal parameter connecting these properties. Using Floquet random Clifford circuits on two distinct sparse graph architectures with tunable spectral dimension, we find that ds governs both quantum information spreading and the scaling of the resulting quantum error-correcting code distance. We identify a geometry-induced entanglement phase transition from localized area-law to ergodic volume-law, whose universality is determined by ds and exhibits long-range percolation criticality. In the ergodic phase, the circuit acts as a CSS code encoder whose code distance is set by the competition between two logical sectors --- the cost of severing the graph and the length of its shortest winding cycle --- which connectivity pushes in opposite directions. The spectral dimension organizes this trade-off, highlighting a maximum at intermediate ds retaining sparse connectivity and physical realizability.
Nonlocal light-mediated interactions between cold atoms coupled to the mode of an optical cavity present unique prospects for simulating the quantum dynamics of strongly-interacting many-body systems. In a recent publication, we introduced a tunable, nonlocal sparse spin network that can be engineered in near-term single-mode cavity QED platforms.1 In this companion paper, we study this spin network in detail and pedagogically review its basic dynamical properties, providing theoretical details and calculations that expand on the statements made in our original publication. We show that the network exhibits two distinct notions of emergent geometry - linear and treelike - that can be accessed using a single tunable parameter. In either of these two extreme limits, we find a succinct description of the resulting dynamics in terms of two distinct metrics on the network, encoding a notion of either linear or treelike distance between spins. We also show that the network can be mapped in these two extreme limits onto exactly solvable models: a linear Heisenberg spin chain in one limit, and a Dyson hierarchical model in the other. These observations highlight the essential role played by the geometry of the interaction structure in determining a system's dynamics, and raise prospects for novel studies of nonlocal and highly chaotic quantum dynamics in near-term experiments.
We investigate how interaction geometry shapes the low-energy phases of sparse tunable long-range quantum models. We focus on a class of graphs whose degree grows logarithmically with system size, and show how symmetry and frustration in graph connectivity can drive, suppress, and reshape ground-state phase transitions. The central examples are power-of-p graphs, where even and odd values of p exhibit qualitatively distinct behaviour: even-p graphs inherit the rich phase structure of the power-of-two model, while odd-p graphs are governed by geometric frustration. Fibonacci graphs provide a contrasting case, lacking the discrete self-similarity of the power-of-p family but exhibiting a direct geometric mapping between the short- and long-range limits. Across our models, we find that phase structure and criticality are governed by the same effective-geometry principle, unifying our framework for experimentally motivated long-range quantum systems.
Quantum many-body Hamiltonians with two-body interactions can be represented by graphs, with sites as nodes and two-site couplings as edges. We investigate how the geometry of these graphs affects transport and entanglement growth. To do so, we study dynamics for quantum hopping on a random graph model with an effective range parameter. Tuning it, we interpolate between nearest-neighbor and all-to-all graphs, identifying a new localization regime that is robust in both single-particle and finite-density cases. This provides a model of Anderson localization induced by structural disorder, with implications for amorphous materials and tunable-range analog quantum simulators.
We propose an experimentally realizable quantum spin model that exhibits fast scrambling, based on nonlocal interactions that couple sites whose separation is a power of 2. By controlling the relative strengths of deterministic, nonrandom couplings, we can continuously tune from the linear geometry of a nearest-neighbor spin chain to an ultrametric geometry in which the effective distance between spins is governed by their positions on a tree graph. The transition in geometry can be observed in quench dynamics, and is furthermore manifest in calculations of the entanglement entropy. Between the linear and treelike regimes, we find a peak in entanglement and exponentially fast spreading of quantum information across the system. Our proposed implementation, harnessing photon-mediated interactions among cold atoms in an optical cavity, offers a test case for experimentally observing the emergent geometry of a quantum many-body system.