In closed generic many-body systems, unitary evolution disperses local quantum information into highly nonlocal objects, resulting in thermalization. Such a process is called information scrambling, whose swiftness is quantified by the operator size growth. However, the impact of couplings to the environment on the process of information scrambling remains unexplored for quantum systems embedded within an environment. Here we predict a dynamical transition in quantum systems with all-to-all interactions accompanied by an environment, which separates two phases. In the dissipative phase, information scrambling halts as the operator size decays with time, while in the scrambling phase, dispersion of information persists, and the operator size grows and saturates to an O(N) value in the long-time limit with N the number of degrees of freedom of the systems. The transition is driven by the competition between the system's intrinsic and environment propelled scramblings and the environment-induced dissipation. Our prediction is derived from a general argument based on epidemiological models and demonstrated analytically via solvable Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models. We provide further evidence which suggests that the transition is generic to quantum chaotic systems when coupled to an environment. Our study sheds light on the fundamental behavior of quantum systems in the presence of an environment.
In closed generic many-body systems, unitary evolution disperses local quantum information into highly nonlocal objects, resulting in thermalization. Such a process is called information scrambling, whose swiftness is quantified by the operator size growth. However, the impact of couplings to the environment on the process of information scrambling remains unexplored for quantum systems embedded within an environment. Here we predict a dynamical transition in quantum systems with all-to-all interactions accompanied by an environment, which separates two phases. In the dissipative phase, information scrambling halts as the operator size decays with time, while in the scrambling phase, dispersion of information persists, and the operator size grows and saturates to an O(N) value in the long-time limit with N the number of degrees of freedom of the systems. The transition is driven by the competition between the system's intrinsic and environment propelled scramblings and the environment-induced dissipation. Our prediction is derived from a general argument based on epidemiological models and demonstrated analytically via solvable Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models. We provide further evidence which suggests that the transition is generic to quantum chaotic systems when coupled to an environment. Our study sheds light on the fundamental behavior of quantum systems in the presence of an environment.
Abstract In generic closed quantum systems, the complexity of operators increases under time evolution governed by the Heisenberg equation, reflecting the scrambling of local quantum information. However, when systems interact with an external environment, the system-environment coupling allows operators to escape from the system, inducing a dynamical transition between the scrambling phase and the dissipative phase. This transition is known as the environment-induced information scrambling transition, originally proposed in Majorana fermion systems. In this work, we advance this discovery by investigating the transition in charge-conserved systems with space-time randomness. We construct solvable Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models of complex fermions coupled to an environment, enabling the analytical computation of operator growth. We determine the critical dissipation strength, which is proportional to n(1−n) n ( 1 - n ) with n being the density of the complex fermions, arising from the suppression in the quantum Lyapunova exponent due to the Pauli blockade in the scattering process. We further analyze the density dependence of maximally scrambled operators at late time. Our results shed light on the intriguing interplay between information scrambling, dissipation, and conservation laws.
Quantum teleportation is a phenomenon arising from entanglement, decisively distinguishing the classical and quantum worlds. The recent success of many-body quantum teleportation is even more surprising: Although input information is initially dispersed and encoded into the many-body state in a complex way, the teleportation process can refocus this highly nonlocal information at the receiver's end. This success manifests intriguing capability of many-body systems in quantum information processing. Current studies indicate that information scrambling, a generic dynamic process in many-body systems, underlies the effectiveness of many-body quantum teleportation. However, this process is known to undergo a scrambling-dissipation transition in the presence of environments. How environments affect the quantum information processing capability of many-body systems calls for further investigation. In this work, we study many-body quantum teleportation in the presence of environments. We predict two emergent critical points that hallmark the transitions of the teleportation performance from the quantum regime to the classical regime and finally to the no-signal regime as the system-environment coupling, quantified by γ , increases. In the quantum regime, teleportation can outperform its classical counterparts, while in the classical regime, it can be replaced by a classical channel. Our prediction is based on a generic argument harnessing the relationship between many-body quantum teleportation and information scrambling, corroborated by solvable Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models.
A bstract Information scrambling refers to the phenomenon in which local quantum information in a many-body system becomes dispersed throughout the entire system under unitary evolution. It has been extensively studied in closed quantum systems, where it is quantified by operator size growth, revealing deep connections between condensed matter physics, high-energy physics, and quantum information. However, when extending the study of operator size dynamics to open quantum systems, two different definitions of operator size distributions emerge. These definitions are based on different treatments of the bath. In this work, we aim to establish a unified picture for operator size dynamics in open quantum systems, using the solvable Brownian SYK models at generic system size. In particular, we provide the conditions under which the signature of scrambling transition — discovered using one particular definition — appears in operator size dynamics under the other definition. Additionally, we extend previous studies by exploring finite-size effects that are not captured by the scramblon theory. Our results provide a refined understanding of operator size dynamics in open quantum systems.
Information scrambling is a hallmark of quantum chaos and thermalization in isolated quantum many-body systems. We investigate scrambling dynamics in the all-to-all interacting spin Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK)-q model using both pure- and mixed-state entanglement measures. We show that von-Neumann and Rényi entropies exhibit rapid growth followed by saturation near Haar-random values, signaling efficient scrambling. The scrambling rate reveals a nontrivial dependence on the interaction order, system size, and Hamiltonian scaling. We further employ mixed-state entanglement as a powerful probe of information scrambling. We numerically find a universal relation between the Rényi-1/2 mutual information and entanglement negativity for minimal interaction order in the early growth regime. Furthermore, entanglement negativity displays a Page-curve-like behavior under unequal subsystem partitioning, characterized by the birth, spread, and eventual death of quantum correlations. Our results provide a generic description of information scrambling using entanglement dynamics in all-to-all interacting spin systems with multi-body interactions.
A bstract In closed quantum many-body systems, initially localized information spreads throughout the system and becomes highly complex. This phenomenon, known as information scrambling, is closely related to entropy growth and quantum thermalization. Recent studies have shown that dissipation in open systems can hinder information scrambling, driving the system into a dissipative phase when the system-bath coupling is strong. However, the signature of this scrambling transition in entropy dynamics remains unexplored. In this work, we unveil a novel phenomenon in open quantum systems, termed entropy accumulation, which occurs exclusively within the scrambling phase. By generalizing the study of perturbative Page curve in closed systems, we consider a setup in which a probe is weakly coupled to a system that is already interacting with a bath. We calculate the increase in the second Rényi entropy induced by an external impulse on the system, after tracing out the probe. Despite the system-probe coupling being weak, the entropy continues to increase and eventually saturates at a finite value due to operator growth. In contrast, the entropy increase is limited by the coupling strength in the dissipative phase. The theoretical prediction is derived from both general arguments and explicit examples using generalized Boltzmann equations or SYK solvable models. Our results offer new insights into the intriguing relationship between entropy dynamics and information scrambling in open quantum systems.
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.