This paper explores a route to non-ergodic quantum dynamics where algebraic restrictions in operator space arise from local constraints on the causal light cone. We model this through tri-partite unitaries (we dub 'walls') that permanently arrest local operator spreading in periodic time-evolution. We show that the structure of the resulting causally independent subsystems can be understood rigorously through the invariance of embedded operator algebras (ie. super-operator symmetries). Our work involves a detailed study of local conserved quantities and generalisation to time-dependent dynamics. Using representation theory, the general form of wall gates is derived from the unitary automorphism group of the embedded algebra with links to quantum error-correcting codes. From the point of view of operator spreading, our theory is a minimal model for non-ergodic quantum circuit dynamics and we explore its effects on probes of many-body quantum chaos. We prove an entanglement area law due to causal constraints and discuss its stability against local measurements. In a random unitary ensemble with causally independent subsystems, we compare spectral correlations with the universal (chaotic) ensemble using the spectral form factor. Our results offer a rigorous understanding of locally constrained quantum dynamics from a quantum information perspective.
This paper explores a route to non-ergodic quantum dynamics where algebraic restrictions in operator space arise from local constraints on the causal light cone. We model this through tri-partite unitaries (we dub 'walls') that permanently arrest local operator spreading in periodic time-evolution. We show that the structure of the resulting causally independent subsystems can be understood rigorously through the invariance of embedded operator algebras (ie. super-operator symmetries). Our work involves a detailed study of local conserved quantities and generalisation to time-dependent dynamics. Using representation theory, the general form of wall gates is derived from the unitary automorphism group of the embedded algebra with links to quantum error-correcting codes. From the point of view of operator spreading, our theory is a minimal model for non-ergodic quantum circuit dynamics and we explore its effects on probes of many-body quantum chaos. We prove an entanglement area law due to causal constraints and discuss its stability against local measurements. In a random unitary ensemble with causally independent subsystems, we compare spectral correlations with the universal (chaotic) ensemble using the spectral form factor. Our results offer a rigorous understanding of locally constrained quantum dynamics from a quantum information perspective.
Floquet quantum circuits are able to realise a wide range of non-equilibrium quantum states, exhibiting quantum chaos, topological order and localisation. In this work, we investigate the stability of operator localisation and emergence of chaos in random Floquet-Clifford circuits subjected to unitary perturbations which drive them away from the Clifford limit. We construct a nearest-neighbour Clifford circuit with a brickwork pattern and study the effect of including disordered non-Clifford gates. The perturbations are uniformly sampled from single-qubit unitaries with probability p on each qubit. We show that the interacting model exhibits strong localisation of operators for 0 ≤ p < 1 that is characterised by the fragmentation of operator space into disjoint sectors due to the appearance of wall configurations. Such walls give rise to emergent local integrals of motion for the circuit that we construct exactly. We analytically establish the stability of localisation against generic perturbations and calculate the average length of operator spreading tunable by p . Although our circuit is not separable across any bi-partition, we further show that the operator localisation leads to an entanglement bottleneck, where initially unentangled states remain weakly entangled across typical fragment boundaries. Finally, we study the spectral form factor (SFF) to characterise the chaotic properties of the operator fragments and spectral fluctuations as a probe of non-ergodicity. In the p = 1 model, the emergence of a fragmentation time scale is found before random matrix theory sets in after which the SFF can be approximated by that of the circular unitary ensemble. Our work provides an explicit description of quantum phases in operator dynamics and circuit ergodicity which can be realised on current NISQ devices.
Phenomena in quantum chaotic systems such as spectral fluctuations are known to be described remarkably well by the random matrix theory (RMT) in small energy intervals and over large time scales. However, in exchange for analytical tractability, RMT has been constructed to leave out an important element of realistic physical systems { the notion of locality. Since quantum information propagates at a finite speed in a spatially-extended quantum chaotic system, there exists time scales before which RMT is effective. How do we describe the non-equilibrium quantum dynamics at intermediate timescales which are much longer than the local relaxation time but too short for RMT to apply? What are the signatures of many-body quantum chaotic systems beyond the description of RMT? In this thesis, we address these questions by analysing minimal models that incorporate a notion of locality and at the same time retain some analytical tractability of RMT. More specifically, we study Floquet quantum circuits that are random in space but periodic in time. These circuits consist of local and random quantum gates that act on a q-state `spin' at each site. After a brief review of classical chaos, quantum chaos, and quantum circuits in Chapter 1, we present three main results. In Chapter 2, we formulate a diagrammatical approach for computing ensemble averages of observables over random unitary circuits, and derive exact results on spectral statistics and dynamical observables for a Floquet circuit in the large-q limit. In Chapter 3, we further investigate the spectral statistics in spatiallyextended many-body quantum chaotic systems by computing the spectral form factor K(t) analytically and numerically. We show that K(t) follows the RMT description at times longer than the Thouless time tTh and identify the scaling of tTh at the large-q limit of a Floquet circuit. In Chapter 4, we discuss eigenstate correlations for spatially-extended many-body quantum chaotic systems, in terms of the statistical properties of matrix elements of local observables. While the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is known to give an excellent description of these quantities, the phenomenon of scrambling and the butterfly effect imply structure beyond ETH. We determine analytically and verify numerically the universal form of this structure at long distances and small eigenvalue separations for Floquet systems.
We study the time-evolution operator in a family of local quantum circuits with random fields in a fixed direction. We argue that the presence of quantum chaos implies that at large times the time-evolution operator becomes effectively a random matrix in the many-body Hilbert space. To quantify this phenomenon, we compute analytically the squared magnitude of the trace of the evolution operator-the generalized spectral form factor-and compare it with the prediction of random matrix theory. We show that for the systems under consideration, the generalized spectral form factor can be expressed in terms of dynamical correlation functions of local observables in the infinite temperature state, linking chaotic and ergodic properties of the systems. This also provides a connection between the many-body Thouless time τ_{th}-the time at which the generalized spectral form factor starts following the random matrix theory prediction-and the conservation laws of the system. Moreover, we explain different scalings of τ_{th} with the system size observed for systems with and without the conservation laws.
Quantum chaos entails an entropic and computational obstruction to describing a system and thus is intrinsically difficult to characterize. An understanding of quantum chaos is fundamentally related to the mechanism of thermalization in many-body systems and the quantum nature of black holes. In this thesis we adopt the view that quantum information theory provides a powerful framework in which to elucidate chaos in strongly-interacting quantum systems. We first push towards a more precise understanding of chaotic dynamics by relating different diagnostics of chaos, studying the time-evolution of random matrix Hamiltonians, and quantifying random matrix behavior in physical systems. We derive relations between out-of-time ordered correlation functions, spectral quantities, and frame potentials to relate the scrambling of quantum information, decay of correlators, and Haar-randomness. We give analytic expressions for these quantities in random matrix theory to explore universal aspects of late-time dynamics. Motivated by our random matrix results, we define k-invariance in order to capture the onset of random matrix behavior in physical systems. We then refine our diagnostics in order to study chaotic systems with symmetry by considering Haar-randomness with respect to quotients of the unitary group, and in doing so we generalize our quantum information machinery. We further consider extended random matrix ensembles in the context of strongly-interacting quantum systems dual to black holes. Lastly, we study operator growth in classes of random quantum circuits.
We investigate the spectral and transport properties of many-body quantum systems with conserved charges and kinetic constraints. Using random unitary circuits, we compute ensemble-averaged spectral form factors and linear-response correlation functions, and find that their characteristic timescales are given by the inverse gap of an effective Hamiltonian-or equivalently, a transfer matrix describing a classical Markov process. Our approach allows us to connect directly the Thouless time, t_{Th}, determined by the spectral form factor, to transport properties and linear-response correlators. Using tensor network methods, we determine the dynamical exponent z for a number of constrained, conserving models. We find universality classes with diffusive, subdiffusive, quasilocalized, and localized dynamics, depending on the severity of the constraints. In particular, we show that quantum systems with "Fredkin" constraints exhibit anomalous transport with dynamical exponent z≃8/3.
We study operator dynamics in many-body quantum systems, focusing on generic features of systems that are ergodic, spatially extended, and lack conserved densities. Quantum circuits of various types provide simple models for such systems. We focus on Floquet quantum circuits, comparing their behavior with what has been found previously for circuits that are random in time. Floquet circuits, which have discrete time-translation symmetry, represent an intermediate case between circuits that are random in time and lack any symmetry, and systems with a time-independent Hamiltonian and continuous time-translation invariance. By making this comparison, one of our aims is to identify signatures of time-translation symmetry in Floquet operator dynamics. To characterize behavior we examine a variety of quantities in solvable models and numerically: operator autocorrelation functions; the partial spectral form factor; the out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC); and the paths in operator space that make the dominant contributions to the ensemble-averaged autocorrelation functions. Our most striking result is that ensemble-averaged autocorrelation functions show behavior that is distinctively different in Floquet systems compared to systems in which successive time-steps are independent. Specifically, while average autocorrelation functions decay on a microscopic timescale for circuits that are random in time, in Floquet systems they have a late-time tail with a duration that grows parametrically with the size of the operator support. In the simplest models this tail is separated from the initial decay by a minimum, so that the average autocorrelation function has an intermediate-time peak. The existence of these tails provides a way to understand deviations of the spectral form factor from random matrix behavior at times shorter than the Thouless time. In contrast to this feature in autocorrelation functions, we find no new aspects to the behavior of OTOCs for Floquet models compared to random-in-time circuits. We show that this difference between averaged autocorrelation functions and OTOCs can be understood in terms of the paths in operator space that contribute to the two quantities: paths for the former retain a limited support at late times, while paths for the latter are dominated by operator spreading.