In many physical settings, the statistical properties of quantum states are thought to be described by the Scrooge ensemble, a more structured generalization of the Haar ensemble. In this work, we prove several key results on the properties and complexity of Scrooge-random states in macroscopic quantum systems, and provide a general-purpose calculus for evaluating their moments. A key theme of our results is a separation between universal random fluctuations in non-local properties and exponential concentration of all local properties. Implications for device benchmarking, sampling advantages beyond random circuits, quantum complexity growth, and the physical origin of Scrooge-random states are discussed.
In many physical settings, the statistical properties of quantum states are thought to be described by the Scrooge ensemble, a more structured generalization of the Haar ensemble. In this work, we prove several key results on the properties and complexity of Scrooge-random states in macroscopic quantum systems, and provide a general-purpose calculus for evaluating their moments. A key theme of our results is a separation between universal random fluctuations in non-local properties and exponential concentration of all local properties. Implications for device benchmarking, sampling advantages beyond random circuits, quantum complexity growth, and the physical origin of Scrooge-random states are discussed.
The Scrooge ensemble associated with a density matrix ρ is the maximally random ensemble whose average density matrix is ρ. It has attracted growing interest for its applications to quantum many-body dynamics and quantum information. The intrinsic statistical properties of the Scrooge ensembles are encoded in their higher-order moments, yet they are nontrivial to analyze and prepare for they feature a non-polynomial Haar integrand, blocking direct use of Haar integration machinery. Existing physical mechanisms to sample multiple copies of states from the Scrooge ensembles, meanwhile, typically require costly postselection, rendering them inefficient for large system size. In this work, we develop efficient and accurate methods for analyzing and implementing Scrooge moments. We first introduce a polynomial approximation to the Scrooge k-th moments whose error is tunable down to a threshold that improves from inverse polynomial to exponential in 1/∣∣ρ∣∣∞ over previous results. Building on our approximation, we then give the first efficient quantum algorithm that estimates observable expectation values using O(k3/ε5) copies of ρ for any target error ε above this threshold. We further provide a construction of a block encoding of the Scrooge k-th moment when the preparation circuit of ρ is known. Of independent interest could be a key subroutine in our algorithms, which efficiently implements projection onto the k-fold symmetric subspace for ρ⊗k using O(k3/ε2) samples of ρ, avoiding the naive k! postselection cost of such a projection. These results provide new tools for both the theoretical analysis and practical prediction of properties of Scrooge ensembles, with potential applications to quantum many-body dynamics and quantum information processing.
Recent advances in quantum simulators allow direct experimental access to ensembles of pure states generated by measuring part of an isolated quantum many-body system. These projected ensembles encode fine-grained information beyond thermal expectation values and provide a new window into quantum thermalization. In chaotic dynamics, projected ensembles exhibit universal statistics governed by maximum-entropy principles, known as deep thermalization. At infinite temperature this universality is characterized by Haar-random ensembles. More generally, physical constraints such as finite temperature or conservation laws lead to Scrooge ensembles, which are maximally entropic distributions of pure states consistent with these constraints. Here we introduce Scrooge k-designs, which approximate Scrooge ensembles, and use this framework to sharpen the conditions under which Scrooge-like behavior emerges. We first show that global Scrooge designs arise from long-time chaotic unitary dynamics alone, without measurements. Second, we show that measuring a complementary subsystem of a scrambled global state drawn from a global Scrooge 2k-design induces a local Scrooge k-design. Third, we show that a local Scrooge k-design arises from an arbitrary entangled state when the complementary system is measured in a scrambled basis induced by a unitary drawn from a Haar 2k-design. These results show that the resources required to generate approximate Scrooge ensembles scale only with the desired degree of approximation, enabling efficient implementations. Complementing our analytical results, numerical simulations identify coherence, entanglement, non-stabilizerness, and information scrambling as essential ingredients for the emergence of Scrooge-like behavior. Together, our findings advance theoretical explanations for maximally entropic, information-stingy randomness in quantum many-body systems.
Thermalization conventionally describes local properties of isolated many-body systems at equilibrium. Magic, or nonstabilizerness $\unicode{x2013}$ the resource enabling universal quantum computation $\unicode{x2013}$ is by contrast encoded in the global structure of the many-body wavefunction. We show that, despite its global nature, the magic of equilibrium pure states of chaotic many-body systems, including late-time evolved states and energy eigenstates, is universal: it is captured by the thermal Scrooge ensemble, the minimally informative ensemble of pure states consistent with the Gibbs state at the same effective temperature. Therefore, for systems with no conserved quantities other than the total energy, equilibrium magic is a function of temperature alone, independent of the initial state and other microscopic features of the equilibrium state. This yields concrete universal predictions for the stabilizer Rényi entropies (SREs). At infinite temperature, the SRE is set by Haar-like fluctuations of the Pauli spectrum, while at finite temperature energy conservation induces a volume-law thermodynamic correction controlled by the thermal Pauli spectrum. We support these predictions with analytical arguments and extensive numerical simulations. We further show that chaotic many-body systems at high temperatures possess long-range magic and entanglement that cannot be removed by finite-depth local quantum circuits. Our results establish magic as a thermodynamic property of chaotic many-body systems and suggest that Scrooge ensembles may provide a unified framework for quantum many-body resources.
The probabilistic nature of quantum measurement provides a direct window into the structure and complexity of many-body wave functions. When only part of a system is measured, the remaining degrees of freedom form an ensemble of post-measurement states whose statistical structure can reveal a stronger form of thermalization, known as deep thermalization. Recent numerical evidence suggests that this phenomenon is characterized by convergence of the projected ensemble to the Scrooge ensemble, a maximally random ensemble compatible with a given density matrix. In this Letter, we use the solvable Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model to unveil the mechanism by which the Scrooge ensemble emerges in many-body systems. By formulating measurement probabilities and post-measurement states in terms of path integrals, we analytically characterize all moments of the projected ensemble and show that they exactly match those of the Scrooge ensemble, even at short evolution times. We further connect this result to the saddle-point structure of the measurement path integral, which naturally generates the replica permutations underlying Scrooge statistics. Our results establish the solvable SYK model as a tractable setting for exploring universal statistics of quantum measurements in chaotic many-body dynamics.
Measuring part of a many-body wave function generates a projected ensemble of pure quantum states on the unmeasured subsystem. Recent advances in deep thermalization have shown that, in chaotic systems, this ensemble universally converges to the maximally random ensemble compatible with its average density matrix, known as the Scrooge ensemble. By contrast, free-fermion systems are nonchaotic, and their quantum states are constrained to remain Gaussian. Motivated by this distinction, we introduce the fermionic Gaussian Scrooge ensemble to describe deep thermalization in generic free-fermion systems. This ensemble is defined as a distortion of the Gaussian Haar ensemble by the average density matrix, and its moments reveal an enlarged symmetry of Gaussian states in the replicated Hilbert space. We demonstrate the emergence of the fermionic Gaussian Scrooge ensemble in two complementary settings: (1) we analytically prove that the projected ensemble of the SYK2 model follows the fermionic Gaussian Scrooge ensemble at arbitrary evolution times; (2) we provide numerical evidence that it emerges at sufficiently long times in random Gaussian circuits with charge conservation. Our results establish the fermionic Gaussian Scrooge ensemble as a universal description of deep thermalization in free-fermion systems.
The output state of a 2D geometrically local shallow random quantum circuit does not have long range correlations due to its lightcone structure. But this changes if one measures a subset of the qubits: long-range entanglement can be induced by the measurement process, leading to conditional correlations between distant qubits. In this paper we investigate the structure of conditional dependence in these circuits and its consequences for quantum advantage. For a tripartition ABC of the qubits, we consider the ensemble of post-measurement states on A that is conditioned on a specific measurement outcome on B and ranges over all possible measurement outcomes on C. For circuit depths exceeding a constant critical value d∗, we conjecture that this ensemble is well approximated by a certain generalization of the Haar ensemble, called the Scrooge ensemble~[Jozsa \textit{et al.}, \href{https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.49.668}{Phys. Rev. A \textbf{49}, 668 (1994)}]; we also provide supporting numerical and analytical evidence. Our conjecture describes a precise sense in which the state retains its lightcone structure on the remaining unmeasured qubits, but also develops some globally random features arising from the measurement. A consequence is that n-qubit shallow random quantum circuits in two dimensions are classically efficiently simulable in the presence of a tiny depolarizing noise rate Ω(log(n)/n).