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arXiv:2404.13089 · Journal of High Energy Physics

Measurable Krylov spaces and eigenenergy count in quantum state dynamics

Saud Čindrak, Adrian Paschke, Lina Jaurigue, Kathy Lüdge

Published Oct 10, 2024• 10 citations
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Abstract

A bstract In this work, we propose a quantum-mechanically measurable basis for the computation of spread complexity. Current literature focuses on computing different powers of the Hamiltonian to construct a basis for the Krylov state space and the computation of the spread complexity. We show, through a series of proofs, that time-evolved states with different evolution times can be used to construct an equivalent space to the Krylov state space used in the computation of the spread complexity. Afterwards, we introduce the effective dimension, which is upper-bounded by the number of pairwise distinct eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian. The computation of the spread complexity requires knowledge of the Hamiltonian and a classical computation of the different powers of the Hamiltonian. The computation of large powers of the Hamiltonian becomes increasingly difficult for large systems. The first part of our work addresses these issues by defining an equivalent space, where the original basis consists of quantum-mechanically measurable states. We demonstrate that a set of different time-evolved states can be used to construct a basis. We subsequently verify the results through numerical analysis, demonstrating that every time-evolved state can be reconstructed using the defined vector space. Based on this new space, we define an upper-bounded effective dimension and analyze its influence on finite-dimensional systems. We further show that the Krylov space dimension is equal to the number of pairwise distinct eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian, enabling a method to determine the number of eigenenergies the system has experimentally. Lastly, we compute the spread complexities of both basis representations and observe almost identical behavior, thus enabling the computation of spread complexities through measurements.

DOI
10.1007/jhep10(2024)083

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A bstract In this work, we propose a quantum-mechanically measurable basis for the computation of spread complexity. Current literature focuses on computing different powers of the Hamiltonian to construct a basis for the Krylov state space and the computation of the spread complexity. We show, through a series of proofs, that time-evolved states with different evolution times can be used to construct an equivalent space to the Krylov state space used in the computation of the spread complexity. Afterwards, we introduce the effective dimension, which is upper-bounded by the number of pairwise distinct eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian. The computation of the spread complexity requires knowledge of the Hamiltonian and a classical computation of the different powers of the Hamiltonian. The computation of large powers of the Hamiltonian becomes increasingly difficult for large systems. The first part of our work addresses these issues by defining an equivalent space, where the original basis consists of quantum-mechanically measurable states. We demonstrate that a set of different time-evolved states can be used to construct a basis. We subsequently verify the results through numerical analysis, demonstrating that every time-evolved state can be reconstructed using the defined vector space. Based on this new space, we define an upper-bounded effective dimension and analyze its influence on finite-dimensional systems. We further show that the Krylov space dimension is equal to the number of pairwise distinct eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian, enabling a method to determine the number of eigenenergies the system has experimentally. Lastly, we compute the spread complexities of both basis representations and observe almost identical behavior, thus enabling the computation of spread complexities through measurements.
Spread complexity uses the distribution of support of a time-evolving state in the Krylov basis to quantify dispersal across accessible dimensions of a Hilbert space. Here, we describe how variations in initial conditions, the Hamiltonian, and the dimension of the Hilbert space affect spread complexity and Krylov basis structure. We introduce Koherence, the entropy of coherence between perturbed and unperturbed Krylov bases, which can, e.g., quantify dynamical amplification of differences in initial conditions in chaos. To illustrate, we show that dynamics on SL(2,R), SU(2), and Heisenberg-Weyl group manifolds, often used as paradigmatic settings for contrasting chaotic and integrable (semi-)classical behavior, display distinctively different responses to variations of the initial state or Hamiltonian. We then describe a lattice model that displays linear growth of spread complexity, saturating for bounded lattices and continuing forever in a thermodynamic limit. The latter example illustrates a breakdown of continuum/classical effective descriptions of complexity growth in bounded quantum systems.
We investigate the anatomy and complexity of quantum states in Krylov space, in the ergodic and many-body localised (MBL) phases of a disordered, interacting spin chain. The Krylov basis generated by the Hamiltonian from an initial state provides a representation in which the spread of the time-evolving state constitutes a basis-optimised measure of complexity. We show that the long-time Krylov spread complexity sharply distinguishes the two phases. In the ergodic regime, the infinite-time complexity scales linearly with the Fock-space dimension, indicating that the state spreads over a finite fraction of the Krylov chain. By contrast, it grows sublinearly in the MBL regime, implying that the long-time state occupies only a vanishing fraction of the chain. Further, the profile of the infinite-time state along the Krylov chain exhibits a stretched-exponential decay in the MBL regime. This behaviour reflects a broad distribution of decay lengthscales, associated with different eigenstates contributing to the long-time state. Consistently, a large-deviation analysis of the statistics of eigenstate spread complexities shows that while the ergodic regime receives contributions from almost all eigenstates, the complexity in the MBL regime is dominated by a vanishing fraction of eigenstates, which have anomalously large complexity relative to the typical ones.
In the Wigner-Weyl phase space formulation of quantum mechanics, we analyse the problem of the spreading of an initial state or an initial operator under time evolution when described in terms of the Krylov basis. After constructing the phase space functions corresponding to the Krylov basis states generated by a Hamiltonian from a given initial state by using the Weyl transformation, we subsequently use them to cast the Krylov state complexity as an integral over the phase space in terms of the Wigner function of the time-evolved initial state, so that the contribution of the classical Liouville equation and higher-order quantum corrections to the Wigner function time evolution equation towards the Krylov state complexity can be identified. Next, we construct the double phase space functions associated with the Krylov basis for operators by using a suitable generalisation of the Weyl transformation applicable for superoperators, and use them to rewrite the Krylov operator complexity as an integral over the double phase space in terms of a generalisation of the usual Wigner function. These results, in particular, show that the complexity measures based on the expansion of a time-evolved state (or an operator) in the Krylov basis can be thought to belong to a general class of complexity measures constructed from the expansion coefficients of the time-dependent Wigner function in an orthonormal basis in the phase space, and help us to connect these complexity measures with measures of complexity of time evolved state based on harmonic expansion of the time-dependent Wigner function.
Krylov complexity provides a powerful framework for characterizing the dynamical evolution of quantum systems through the spreading of states in Krylov space. The motivation for this is rooted in the optimality of the Krylov basis for the analyzed cost function. In this work, we reinterpret the motivation for the Krylov basis from a dynamical perspective and show that it corresponds to a first-order approximation of the time-evolution operator. We extend this framework to higher-order generators and analytically disprove the optimality assumption by showing that an infinite-order generator can be constructed to exhibit smaller spread for arbitrary times. We propose a natural time scale for the construction of these higher-order generators and discuss results for matrices sampled from Gaussian Unitary Ensembles, demonstrating smaller Krylov complexity at all higher orders. These results extend the framework of Krylov complexity beyond the conventional Krylov basis by disproving the widely held assumption of optimality, extending the construction to higher-order generators, and introducing a physically motivated method for their construction. Our findings therefore suggest that previous statements and results concerning Krylov complexity may need to be reconsidered.
Krylov complexity is a powerful diagnostic of quantum dynamics, with clear connections to other measures of quantum chaos and operator growth. One such measure is the Loschmidt amplitude, defined as the overlap of initially identical states evolved under two slightly different Hamiltonians. Its decay in certain systems is controlled by the classical Lyapunov exponent. Using the algebraic properties of the Krylov complexity operator, we express Krylov complexity as the derivative of a Loschmidt amplitude whose perturbation is parameterized by an angular variable φφφ. This formulation allows us to define a spectral propagator that encodes the entire complexity distribution, which we characterize for specific types of systems. We study the two-dimensional quantum geometry spanned by time and φφφ where the original and deformed trajectories reside, demonstrating that Krylov complexity is upper-bounded by its volume. We also express the time derivative of Krylov complexity in terms of a distinct Loschmidt amplitude. Depending on the growth of the Lanczos coefficients, the perturbation term in this amplitude can be truncated. We propose that the strength of this perturbation provides a classification scheme for Krylov complexity dynamics and relate it to the φφφ-derivative of the spectral propagator. Using this analytical framework, we derive general relations between the time-dependence of the survival amplitude and Krylov space measures.
A bstract We consider the statistics of the results of a measurement of the spreading operator in the Krylov basis generated by the Hamiltonian of a quantum system starting from a specified initial pure state. We first obtain the probability distribution of the results of measurements of this spreading operator at a certain instant of time, and compute the characteristic function of this distribution. We show that the moments of this characteristic function are related to the so-called generalised spread complexities, and obtain expressions for them in several cases when the Hamiltonian is an element of a Lie algebra. Furthermore, by considering a continuum limit of the Krylov basis, we show that the generalised spread complexities of higher orders have a peak in the time evolution for a random matrix Hamiltonian belonging to the Gaussian unitary ensemble. We also obtain an upper bound in the change in generalised spread complexity at an arbitrary time in terms of the operator norm of the Hamiltonian and discuss the significance of these results.