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arXiv:2509.14810 · Journal of High Energy Physics

Krylov complexity for open quantum system: dissipation and decoherence

Arpan Bhattacharyya, Sayed Gool, S. Shajidul Haque

Published Aug 17, 2026• 1 citation
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Abstract

A bstract We investigate Krylov complexity in open quantum systems using Lindblad master equations for bosonic bath models, with particular emphasis on the Caldeira-Leggett model. Krylov complexity is computed from the moments of the two-point function within the standard master equation framework. For the damped harmonic oscillator, the results reveal clear dissipative features in Krylov complexity. In the Caldeira-Leggett model, in the high-temperature limit, we find that Krylov complexity saturates in the full system and reproduces the expected dissipative behavior when the decoherence term is suppressed in the master equation. Conversely, when the dissipative term is suppressed, the contribution from decoherence exhibits the familiar oscillatory dynamics of the coherent system, along with additional novel features. However, Krylov complexity appears insensitive to the onset of decoherence, as no clear distinctive signature is observed. We attribute this to the fact that Krylov complexity is defined in the Krylov basis, which does not coincide with the conventional basis typically used to study decoherence.

DOI
10.1007/jhep08(2026)140

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A bstract We investigate Krylov complexity in open quantum systems using Lindblad master equations for bosonic bath models, with particular emphasis on the Caldeira-Leggett model. Krylov complexity is computed from the moments of the two-point function within the standard master equation framework. For the damped harmonic oscillator, the results reveal clear dissipative features in Krylov complexity. In the Caldeira-Leggett model, in the high-temperature limit, we find that Krylov complexity saturates in the full system and reproduces the expected dissipative behavior when the decoherence term is suppressed in the master equation. Conversely, when the dissipative term is suppressed, the contribution from decoherence exhibits the familiar oscillatory dynamics of the coherent system, along with additional novel features. However, Krylov complexity appears insensitive to the onset of decoherence, as no clear distinctive signature is observed. We attribute this to the fact that Krylov complexity is defined in the Krylov basis, which does not coincide with the conventional basis typically used to study decoherence.
Krylov complexity is a measure of operator complexity that exhibits universal behavior and bounds a large class of other measures. In this paper, we generalize Krylov complexity from a closed system to an open system coupled to a Markovian bath, where Lindbladian evolution replaces Hamiltonian evolution. We show that Krylov complexity in open systems can be mapped to a non-Hermitian tight-binding model in a half-infinite chain. We discuss the properties of the non-Hermitian terms and show that the strengths of the non-Hermitian terms increase linearly with the increase of the Krylov basis index nnn. Such a non-Hermitian tight-binding model can exhibit localized edge modes that determine the long-time behavior of Krylov complexity. Hence, the growth of Krylov complexity is suppressed by dissipation, and at long times, Krylov complexity saturates at a finite value much smaller than that of a closed system with the same Hamiltonian. Our conclusions are supported by numerical results on several models, such as the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and the interacting fermion model. Our work provides insights for discussing complexity, chaos, and holography for open quantum systems.
A bstract We study the operator growth in open quantum systems with dephasing dissipation terms, extending the Krylov complexity formalism of [1]. Our results are based on the study of the dissipative q -body Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK q ) model, governed by the Markovian dynamics. We introduce a notion of “operator size concentration” which allows a diagrammatic and combinatorial proof of the asymptotic linear behavior of the two sets of Lanczos coefficients ( a n and b n ) in the large q limit. Our results corroborate with the semi-analytics in finite q in the large N limit, and the numerical Arnoldi iteration in finite q and finite N limit. As a result, Krylov complexity exhibits exponential growth following a saturation at a time that grows logarithmically with the inverse dissipation strength. The growth of complexity is suppressed compared to the closed system results, yet it upper bounds the growth of the normalized out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC). We provide a plausible explanation of the results from the dual gravitational side.
A bstract We use Krylov complexity to study operator growth in the q -body dissipative Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, where the dissipation is modeled by linear and random p -body Lindblad operators. In the large q limit, we analytically establish the linear growth of two sets of coefficients for any generic jump operators. We numerically verify this by implementing the bi-Lanczos algorithm, which transforms the Lindbladian into a pure tridiagonal form. We find that the Krylov complexity saturates inversely with the dissipation strength, while the dissipative timescale grows logarithmically. This is akin to the behavior of other 𝔮-complexity measures, namely out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) and operator size, which we also demonstrate. We connect these observations to continuous quantum measurement processes. We further investigate the pole structure of a generic auto-correlation and the high-frequency behavior of the spectral function in the presence of dissipation, thereby revealing a general principle for operator growth in dissipative quantum chaotic systems.
We obtain analytic solutions to various models of dissipation of the quantum harmonic oscillator, employing a simple method in the Wigner function Fourier transform description of the system; and study as an exemplification, the driven open quantum harmonic oscillator. The environmental models we use are based on optical master equations for the zero and finite temperature bath and whose open dynamics are described by a Lindblad master equation, and also we use the Caldeira-Leggett model for the high temperature limit, in the the under damped an the over damped case. Under the Wigner Fourier transform or chord function as it has been called, it becomes particularly simple to solve the dynamics of the open oscillator in the sense that the dynamics of the system are reduced to the application of an evolution matrix related to the damped motion of the oscillator.
A bstract Krylov complexity is a measure of operator growth in quantum systems, based on the number of orthogonal basis vectors needed to approximate the time evolution of an operator. In this paper, we study the Krylov complexity of a PT-symmetric system of oscillators, which exhibits two phase transitions that separate a dissipative state, a Rabi-oscillation state, and an ultra-strongly coupled regime. We use a generalization of the su (1) algebra associated to the Bateman oscillator to describe the Hamiltonian of the coupled system, and construct a set of coherent states associated with this algebra. We compute the Krylov (spread) complexity using these coherent states, and find that it can distinguish between the PT-symmetric and PT symmetry-broken phases. We also show that the Krylov complexity reveals the ill-defined nature of the vacuum of the Bateman oscillator, which is a special case of our system. Our results demonstrate the utility of Krylov complexity as a tool to probe the properties and transitions of PT-symmetric systems.
Caldeira and Leggett (CL) in a seminal paper derived a master equation describing Markovian Quantum Brownian motion. Such an equation suffered of not being completely positive, and many efforts have been made to solve this issue. We show that, when a careful mathematical analysis is performed, the model considered by CL leads to a non dissipative master equation. We argue that the correct way to understand the master equation derived in the CL regime is to consider it non-Markovian. Moreover, we show that if one wants to provide a microscopic description of Quantum Brownian motion one always needs to consider a non-Markovian dynamics. We conclude that dissipation is a genuinely non-Markovian feature.