We study how the information flows in many-body dynamics governed by random quantum circuits and discover a rich set of dynamical phase transitions in this information flow.The phase-transition points and their critical exponents are established across Clifford and Haar random circuits through finite-size scaling.The flow of both classical and quantum information, measured respectively by Holevo and coherent information, shows similar dynamical phase transition behaviors.We investigate how the phase transitions depend on the initial location of the information and the final probe region, and find ubiquitous behaviors in these transitions, revealing interesting properties about the information propagation and scrambling in this quantum many-body model.Our paper underscores rich behaviors of the information flow in large systems with numerous phase transitions, thereby sheds light on the understanding of quantum many-body dynamics.
We study how the information flows in many-body dynamics governed by random quantum circuits and discover a rich set of dynamical phase transitions in this information flow.The phase-transition points and their critical exponents are established across Clifford and Haar random circuits through finite-size scaling.The flow of both classical and quantum information, measured respectively by Holevo and coherent information, shows similar dynamical phase transition behaviors.We investigate how the phase transitions depend on the initial location of the information and the final probe region, and find ubiquitous behaviors in these transitions, revealing interesting properties about the information propagation and scrambling in this quantum many-body model.Our paper underscores rich behaviors of the information flow in large systems with numerous phase transitions, thereby sheds light on the understanding of quantum many-body dynamics.
Information in a chaotic quantum system will scramble across the system, preventing any local measurement from reconstructing it. The scrambling dynamics is key to understanding a wide range of quantum many-body systems. Here, we use Holevo information to quantify the scrambling dynamics, which shows a phase-transition-like behavior. When applying long random Clifford circuits to a large system, no information can be recovered from a subsystem of less than half the system size. When exceeding half the system size, the amount of stored information grows by two bits of classical information per qubit until saturation through another sharp unanalytical change. We also study critical behavior near the transition points. Finally, we use coherent information to quantify the scrambling of quantum information in the system, which shows similar phase-transition-like behavior.
The physics of information scrambling in quantum many-body systems is intimately related to thermalisation and emergence of chaos. However, its standard characterisation through bipartite entanglement or operator growth remains inherently coarse-grained, obscuring the spatiotemporal anatomy of how quantum information flows between different regions of the system and across various length scales. In this work, we develop a theory for the dynamics of local information in local random unitary circuits which resolves the fine-grained microscopic structures of local information flow in such systems. Using the framework of information lattice which systematises the information content at each length scale within each subsystem, we identify a distribution of length scales at which information resides and obtain the dynamics of the distribution. For Haar-random circuits with infinite local Hilbert-space dimensions, we map this dynamics onto an exact classical stochastic process which reveals that this distribution is described by a Tracy-Widom form which moves ballistically in time ($ \propto t$) toward larger scales, accompanied by a ∼t1/3 broadening. We also find the same qualitative behaviour for random Clifford circuits acting on qubits. The similar scaling behaviour in two rather different settings hints strongly towards the universality of our results. In the case of Clifford circuits, we develop a phenomenological Markov process for the dynamics of the stabiliser generators in a specific gauge which confirms the Tracy-Widom distribution and the t1/3 scaling of the fluctuations. Ultimately, our results establish the universal properties of the dynamics of local quantum information in a length scale-resolved fashion and provide a possible route towards bridging exact microscopic theories for information dynamics with emergent hydrodynamic descriptions of information flow.
In quantum many-body dynamics, locally encoded information typically scrambles across the entire system, becoming inaccessible to local probes. The upper bound of accessible information of local probes can be characterized by the Holevo information via optimal measurement. In this work, we investigate the information dynamics of quantum scrambling utilizing local randomized probes, quantified by the averaged accessible information (AAI). We derive an analytical expression for the AAI under Haar-random measurements and demonstrate that it is a function of purity of local reduced density matrix. Operationally, we employ the classical shadow protocol, using only single-qubit randomized Pauli measurements, to efficiently extract the AAI across extended subsystems. Through numerical simulations across diverse many-body paradigms, we show that the AAI can reveal distinct scrambling behaviors, resolving phenomena that range from dynamical confinement and ballistic transport to persistent scar revivals and many-body localization. This work highlights a pragmatic paradigm shift, from relying on optimal measurements to utilizing randomized local probes, for the characterization of complex quantum information dynamics.
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.
We introduce a new perspective on the connection between many-body physics and information theory. We study phase transitions in models with randomness, such as localization in disordered systems, or random quantum circuits with measurements. Utilizing information-based arguments regarding probability distribution differentiation, rigorous results for bounds on critical exponents in such phase transitions are obtained with minimal effort. This allows us to rigorously prove bounds which were previously only conjectured for dynamical critical exponents in localization transitions. In addition, we obtain new bounds on critical exponents in many-body Fock space localization transition and localization in Coulomb-interacting models. Somewhat surprisingly, our bounds are not obeyed by previous studies of these systems, indicating inconsistencies in previous results, which we discuss. Finally, we apply our method to measurement-induced phase transition in random quantum circuits, obtaining bounds transcending recent mapping to percolation problems.
We study a random unitary quantum circuit with only reset channels, which has high feasibility for real quantum devices. In particular, we investigate the many-body statistical physics properties, ``reset-induced'' entanglement phase transitions comparing the classical statistical picture in the large ``d'' limit of qudits. In the property of the reset-induced phase transition the parameter of qudit d is essential. That is, the transition properties induced by the reset channel significantly depend on d. We numerically elucidate this statement employing efficient stabilizer circuit simulations for d=2. Specifically, critical fluctuations that grow with system size are observed near the transition point, and the finite-size scaling analyses yield data collapse consistent with a continuous mixed-state phase transition.} This behavior differs from expectations based on the classical statistical mapping in the large-d limit.