The preparation of quantum many-body systems faces the difficulty that in a realistic scenario only few control parameters of the system may be accessible. In this context, an interesting connection between the energy fluctuations during state preparation and its geometric length as measured by the Fubini-Study metric was discussed by Bukov et al. in 2019 \cite{bukov_geometric_2019}. An inspiring conjecture lower bounding the energy fluctuations by the minimal geometric length of all accessible state preparation protocols was put forward together with supporting examples and numerical evidence. However, we here show that the conjecture does not hold but can be violated if the accessible parameter space has extrinsic curvature, when embedded into the space of all dynamically accessible states. We illustrate this by a number of generic qubit, qutrit and harmonic oscillator systems.
The preparation of quantum many-body systems faces the difficulty that in a realistic scenario only few control parameters of the system may be accessible. In this context, an interesting connection between the energy fluctuations during state preparation and its geometric length as measured by the Fubini-Study metric was discussed by Bukov et al. in 2019 \cite{bukov_geometric_2019}. An inspiring conjecture lower bounding the energy fluctuations by the minimal geometric length of all accessible state preparation protocols was put forward together with supporting examples and numerical evidence. However, we here show that the conjecture does not hold but can be violated if the accessible parameter space has extrinsic curvature, when embedded into the space of all dynamically accessible states. We illustrate this by a number of generic qubit, qutrit and harmonic oscillator systems.
We analyze state preparation within a restricted space of local control parameters between adiabatically connected states of control Hamiltonians.We formulate a conjecture that the time integral of energy fluctuations over the protocol duration is bounded from below by the geodesic length set by the quantum geometric tensor.The conjecture implies a geometric lower bound for the quantum speed limit (QSL).We prove the conjecture for arbitrary, sufficiently slow protocols using adiabatic perturbation theory and show that the bound is saturated by geodesic protocols, which keep the energy variance constant along the trajectory.Our conjecture implies that any optimal unit-fidelity protocol, even those that drive the system far from equilibrium, are fundamentally constrained by the quantum geometry of adiabatic evolution.When the control space includes all possible couplings, spanning the full Hilbert space, we recover the well-known Mandelstam-Tamm bound.However, using only accessible local controls to anneal in complex models such as glasses or to target individual excited states in quantum chaotic systems, the geometric bound for the quantum speed limit can be exponentially large in the system size due to a diverging geodesic length.We validate our conjecture both analytically by constructing counter-diabatic and fast-forward protocols for a three-level system, and numerically in nonintegrable spin chains and a nonlocal SYK model.
We analyze state preparation within a restricted space of local control parameters between adiabatically connected states of control Hamiltonians. We formulate a conjecture that the time integral of energy fluctuations over the protocol duration is bounded from below by the geodesic length set by the quantum geometric tensor. The conjecture implies a geometric lower bound for the quantum speed limit (QSL). We prove the conjecture for arbitrary sufficiently slow protocols using adiabatic perturbation theory, and show that the bound is saturated by geodesic protocols, which keep the energy variance constant along the trajectory. Our conjecture implies that any optimal unit-fidelity protocol, even those which drive the system far from equilibrium, are fundamentally constrained by the quantum geometry of adiabatic evolution. When the control space includes all possible couplings, spanning the full Hilbert space, we recover the well-known Mandelstam-Tamm bound. However, using only accessible local controls to anneal in complex models such as glasses, or target individual excited states in quantum chaotic systems, the geometric bound for the QSL can be exponentially large in the system size due to a diverging geodesic length. We validate our conjecture both analytically by constructing counter-diabatic and fast-forward protocols for a three-level system, and numerically in non-integrable spin chains using optimal control.
We study the complexity of both time-optimal and time sub-optimal quantum Hamiltonian evolutions connecting arbitrary source and a target states on the Bloch sphere equipped with the Fubini-Study metric. This investigation is performed in a number of steps. First, we describe each unitary Schrödinger quantum evolution by means of the path length, the geodesic efficiency, the speed efficiency, and the curvature coefficient of its corresponding dynamical trajectory linking the source state to the target state. Second, starting from a classical probabilistic setting where the so-called information geometric complexity can be employed to describe the complexity of entropic motion on curved statistical manifolds underlying the physics of systems when only partial knowledge about them is available, we transition into a deterministic quantum setting. In this context, after proposing a definition of the complexity of a quantum evolution, we present a notion of quantum complexity length scale. In particular, we discuss the physical significance of both quantities in terms of the accessed (i.e., partial) and accessible (i.e., total) parametric volumes of the regions on the Bloch sphere that specify the quantum mechanical evolution from the source to the target states. Third, after calculating the complexity measure and the complexity length scale for each one of the two quantum evolutions, we compare the behavior of our measures with that of the path length, the geodesic efficiency, the speed efficiency, and the curvature coefficient. We find that, in general, efficient quantum evolutions are less complex than inefficient evolutions. However, we also observe that complexity is more than length. Indeed, longer paths that are sufficiently bent can exhibit a behavior that is less complex than that of shorter paths with a smaller curvature coefficient.
Quantum geometry has traditionally focused on the intrinsic curvature of state spaces, characterized by metrics such as the Fubini–Study distance and the associated sectional curvature Kψ. Recent progress in quantum control and information processing has revealed that the causal relationships between distinct quantum states, encoded in the directed paths of state evolution, may themselves carry a non‑trivial geometric structure. In this work we introduce the concept of Quantum State Causal Curvature (QSCC), denoted Kc(ψi,ψj), which quantifies the curvature arising from causal transitions between two pure states ψi and ψj. We develop a rigorous mathematical framework based on path integrals over unitary trajectories, establish key properties of Kc, and explore its relation to conventional state‑space curvature. Through explicit calculations for qubit systems, harmonic oscillators, and entangled multi‑qubit states, we demonstrate that Kc captures features of the control landscape that are invisible to purely geometric measures. We discuss implications for optimal quantum control, error correction, and quantum thermodynamics, and outline future research directions including experimental verification and extensions to mixed states. Our results pave the way for a new branch of quantum causal geometry, offering fresh insights into the interplay between quantum dynamics, control, and information processing.
We propose a method to obtain optimal protocols for adiabatic ground-state preparation near the adiabatic limit, extending earlier ideas from [D. A. Sivak and G. E. Crooks, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 190602 (2012)] to quantum non-dissipative systems. The space of controllable parameters of isolated quantum many-body systems is endowed with a Riemannian quantum metric structure, which can be exploited when such systems are driven adiabatically. Here, we use this metric structure to construct optimal protocols in order to accomplish the task of adiabatic ground-state preparation in a fixed amount of time. Such optimal protocols are shown to be geodesics on the parameter manifold, maximizing the local fidelity. Physically, such protocols minimize the average energy fluctuations along the path. Our findings are illustrated on the Landau-Zener model and the anisotropic XY spin chain. In both cases we show that geodesic protocols drastically improve the final fidelity. Moreover, this happens even if one crosses a critical point, where the adiabatic perturbation theory fails.
We develop a unified geometric framework for local non-adiabaticity in driven quantum systems. We show that the previously introduced AMT non adiabaticity parameter arises as a special realization of a more general geometric instability criterion governed by the normalized Fubini Study distinguishability speed. The local geometric evolution speed is identified as the physically relevant quantity controlling the onset of non-adiabatic instability.
We introduce a universal dimensionless instability parameter measuring the competition between quantum-state evolution speed and spectral-gap protection. This quantity provides a local, gauge-invariant, and basis-independent criterion for arbitrary driven Hamiltonians. Near quantum critical points, the instability parameter diverges through inverse gap amplification, recovering the Kibble Zurek freeze-out condition directly from local geometric data.
We prove that monotonic occupation-dependent nonlinear regulators geometrically compress the quantum metric, establishing a self-limitation theorem in which nonlinear spectral deformation confines the accessible region of projective Hilbert space under strong driving. The multimode extension yields a matrix-valued instability criterion that identifies collective instability channels invisible to scalar descriptions.
The framework naturally extends to open quantum systems through the Bures metric and quantum Fisher geometry, where thermal mixing and Lindblad decay increase the instability threshold through geometric suppression of state distinguishability. The instability threshold further implies a universal geometric lower bound on coherent control time and quantum gate duration.