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arXiv:2401.17744 · New Journal of Physics

Controlling many-body quantum chaos: Bose–Hubbard systems

Lukas Beringer, Mathias Steinhuber, Juan Diego Urbina, Klaus Richter, Steven Tomsovic

Published Jun 12, 2024• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract This work develops a quantum control application of many-body quantum chaos for ultracold bosonic gases trapped in optical lattices. It is long known how to harness exponential sensitivity to changes in initial conditions for control purposes in classically chaotic systems. In the technique known as targeting, instead of a hindrance to control, the instability becomes a resource. Recently, this classical targeting has been generalized to quantum systems either by periodically countering the inevitable quantum state spreading or by introducing a control Hamiltonian, where both enable localized states to be guided along special chaotic trajectories toward any of a broad variety of desired target states. Only strictly unitary dynamics are involved; i.e. it gives a coherent quantum targeting. In this paper, the introduction of a control Hamiltonian is applied to Bose–Hubbard systems in chaotic dynamical regimes. Properly selected unstable mean field solutions can be followed particularly rapidly to states possessing precise phase relationships and occupancies. In essence, the method generates a quantum simulation technique that can access rather special states. The protocol reduces to a time-dependent control of the chemical potentials, opening up the possibility for application in optical lattice experiments. Explicit applications to custom state preparation and stabilization of quantum many-body scars are presented in one- and two-dimensional lattices (three-dimensional applications are similarly possible).

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/ad5752

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arXiv:2212.12046•Dec 22, 2022•0 citations
Abstract This work develops a quantum control application of many-body quantum chaos for ultracold bosonic gases trapped in optical lattices. It is long known how to harness exponential sensitivity to changes in initial conditions for control purposes in classically chaotic systems. In the technique known as targeting, instead of a hindrance to control, the instability becomes a resource. Recently, this classical targeting has been generalized to quantum systems either by periodically countering the inevitable quantum state spreading or by introducing a control Hamiltonian, where both enable localized states to be guided along special chaotic trajectories toward any of a broad variety of desired target states. Only strictly unitary dynamics are involved; i.e. it gives a coherent quantum targeting. In this paper, the introduction of a control Hamiltonian is applied to Bose–Hubbard systems in chaotic dynamical regimes. Properly selected unstable mean field solutions can be followed particularly rapidly to states possessing precise phase relationships and occupancies. In essence, the method generates a quantum simulation technique that can access rather special states. The protocol reduces to a time-dependent control of the chemical potentials, opening up the possibility for application in optical lattice experiments. Explicit applications to custom state preparation and stabilization of quantum many-body scars are presented in one- and two-dimensional lattices (three-dimensional applications are similarly possible).
The central research objects are bosonic many-body systems and their instabilities. One powerful approach to probing these instabilities in quantum systems is through Out-of-Time-Ordered Correlators (OTOCs), and they are the focus of the first chapter. We investigate a transition phenomenon governed primarily by local instabilities, which differentiates integrable dynamics from generic chaotic behavior. This transition provides a promising route to reliably detect quantum chaos in many-body systems, motivating us to study the onset of chaos as a system evolves from integrable to mixed and fully chaotic regimes. Under the assumption that chaos is properly identified, we exploit its characteristic exponential sensitivity and mixing properties in the second part of our work. Here, we propose a novel protocol for Controlling Many-Body Quantum Chaos, utilizing chaos as a resource to achieve exponentially fast targeting of macroscopically occupied single-particle states, connected via chaotic heteroclinic trajectories. This theoretical framework offers a coherent targeting procedure for state preparation in experimental platforms. Finally, in the third part, we explore the manifestation of quantum chaos in low-energy states of many-body systems relevant for quantum computation, as system size increases. Recent advances in Neural Quantum States (NQS), leveraging machine learning progress driven by the surge of artificial intelligence, have significantly extended the numerical boundaries of many-body simulations, such that we now reach system sizes with a hundred sites. These developments open new opportunities for understanding chaos in large-scale quantum systems.
The ongoing quest for understanding nonequilibrium dynamics of complex quantum systems underpins the foundation of statistical physics as well as the development of quantum technology. Quantum many-body scarring has recently opened a window into novel mechanisms for delaying the onset of thermalization by preparing the system in special initial states, such as the Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ state in a Rydberg atom system. Here we realize many-body scarring in a Bose-Hubbard quantum simulator from previously unknown initial conditions such as the unit-filling state. We develop a quantum-interference protocol for measuring the entanglement entropy and demonstrate that scarring traps the many-body system in a low-entropy subspace. Our work makes the resource of scarring accessible to a broad class of ultracold-atom experiments, and it allows one to explore the relation of scarring to constrained dynamics in lattice gauge theories, Hilbert space fragmentation, and disorder-free localization.
One of the principal goals of controlling classical chaotic dynamical systems is known as targeting, which is the very weakly perturbative process of using the system's extreme sensitivity to initial conditions in order to arrive at a predetermined target state. It is shown that a generalization to chaotic quantum systems is possible in the semiclassical regime, but requires tailored perturbations whose effects must undo the dynamical spreading of the evolving quantum state. The procedure described here is applied to initially minimum uncertainty wave packets in the quantum kicked rotor, a preeminent quantum chaotic paradigm, to illustrate the method, and investigate its accuracy. The method's error can be made to vanish as ℏ→0.
Using the key properties of chaos, i.e. ergodicity and exponential instability, as a resource to control classical dynamics has a long and considerable history. However, in the context of controlling "chaotic" quantum unitary dynamics, the situation is far more tenuous. The classical concepts of exponential sensitivity to trajectory initial conditions and ergodicity do not directly translate into quantum unitary evolution. Nevertheless properties inherent to quantum chaos can take on those roles: i) the dynamical sensitivity to weak perturbations, measured by the fidelity decay, serves a similar purpose as the classical sensitivity to initial conditions; and ii) paired with the fact that quantum chaotic systems are conjectured to be statistically described by random matrix theory, implies a method to translate the ergodic feature into the control of quantum dynamics. With those two properties, it can be argued that quantum chaotic dynamical systems, in principle, allow for full controllability beyond a characteristic time that scales only logarithmically with system size and ℏ−1\hbar^{-1}ℏ−1. In the spirit of classical targeting, it implies that it is possible to fine tune the immense quantum interference with weak perturbations and steer the system from any initial state into any desired target state, subject to constraints imposed by conserved quantities. In contrast, integrable dynamics possess neither ergodicity nor exponential instability, and thus the weak perturbations apparently must break the integrability for control purposes. The main ideas are illustrated with the quantum kicked rotor. The production of revivals, cat-like entangled states, and the transition from any random state to any other random state is possible as demonstrated.
The notion of many-body quantum scars is associated with special eigenstates, usually concentrated in certain parts of Hilbert space, that give rise to robust persistent oscillations in a regime that globally exhibits thermalization. Here we extend these studies to many-body systems possessing a true classical limit characterized by a high-dimensional chaotic phase space, which are not subject to any particular dynamical constraint. We demonstrate genuine quantum scarring of wave functions concentrated in the vicinity of unstable classical periodic mean-field modes in the paradigmatic Bose-Hubbard model. These peculiar quantum many-body states exhibit distinct phase-space localization about those classical modes. Their existence is consistent with Heller's scar criterion and appears to persist in the thermodynamic long-lattice limit. Launching quantum wave packets along such scars leads to observable long-lasting oscillations, featuring periods that scale asymptotically with classical Lyapunov exponents, and displaying intrinsic irregularities that reflect the underlying chaotic dynamics, as opposed to regular tunnel oscillations.
The notion of many-body quantum scars is associated with special eigenstates, usually concentrated in certain parts of Hilbert space, that give rise to robust persistent oscillations in a regime that globally exhibits thermalization. Here we extend these studies to many-body systems possessing a true classical limit characterized by a high-dimensional chaotic phase space, which are not subject to any particular dynamical constraint. We demonstrate genuine quantum scarring of wave functions concentrated in the vicinity of unstable classical periodic mean-field modes in the paradigmatic Bose-Hubbard model. These peculiar quantum many-body states exhibit distinct phase-space localization about those classical modes. Their existence is consistent with Heller's scar criterion and appears to persist in the thermodynamic long-lattice limit. Launching quantum wave packets along such scars leads to observable long-lasting oscillations, featuring periods that scale asymptotically with classical Lyapunov exponents, and displaying intrinsic irregularities that reflect the underlying chaotic dynamics, as opposed to regular tunnel oscillations.