Spectral statistics probe integrability versus chaos and have recently been extended to Markovian open quantum systems described by Lindbladians, whose quantum-trajectory unraveling decomposes the evolution into no-jump dynamics generated by an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian and recycling jumps. In this work, we perform spectrum-statistics diagnostics for Lindbladians and their effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonians. We show that recycling processes, symmetry constraints, and the Liouville-space structure crucially shape the spectral correlations. In particular, we identify a family of spectrally separable Lindbladians whose spectra exhibit robust Poisson statistics, despite the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian varying from Poisson to strongly correlated complex-spectrum statistics. Our work establishes a unified spectral-statistics characterization for Lindbladians and their associated effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonians, deepening our understanding of spectral properties in open many-body systems.
Spectral statistics probe integrability versus chaos and have recently been extended to Markovian open quantum systems described by Lindbladians, whose quantum-trajectory unraveling decomposes the evolution into no-jump dynamics generated by an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian and recycling jumps. In this work, we perform spectrum-statistics diagnostics for Lindbladians and their effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonians. We show that recycling processes, symmetry constraints, and the Liouville-space structure crucially shape the spectral correlations. In particular, we identify a family of spectrally separable Lindbladians whose spectra exhibit robust Poisson statistics, despite the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian varying from Poisson to strongly correlated complex-spectrum statistics. Our work establishes a unified spectral-statistics characterization for Lindbladians and their associated effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonians, deepening our understanding of spectral properties in open many-body systems.
Random matrix spectral statistics are widely used to diagnose quantum chaos in open systems, but whether chaotic eigenvalue correlations are accompanied by Haar-typical eigenoperators remains unclear. We study the operator-entanglement statistics of Liouvillian eigenoperators with near-maximal entanglement, analogous to states near the middle of the spectrum in Hamiltonian systems. Using the Kullback-Leibler divergence, we show that Haar-random statistics accurately describe both the Ginibre and class-AI† Gaussian ensembles. For purely dissipative random Lindbladians, we find that locality of the jump operators drastically alters the eigenoperator-entanglement statistics. Nonlocal Lindbladians remain relatively close to Haar-random behavior, whereas local Lindbladians deviate increasingly from random-matrix statistics with system size. Moreover, unlike in Hamiltonian systems, the most highly entangled eigenoperators of local Lindbladians do not generally lie in the region of largest density of states, owing to the clustered structure of the complex eigenspectrum. We introduce an iterative σ-clipping scheme to extract the high-entanglement distribution without preselecting a spectral window, and find that it is Gaussian for nonlocal Lindbladians but log-normal for local ones. Remarkably, the same log-normal distribution, with no additional fitting, also describes dissipative mixed-field Ising chains belonging to distinct non-Hermitian symmetry classes. Our results therefore point to a universal eigenoperator-entanglement distribution for local Lindbladians that is not captured by generic non-Hermitian random-matrix ensembles.
For Hamiltonian systems, level statistics provide a faithful diagnostic of quantum chaos. By analogy, the statistics of the Lindbladian spectrum are often used in open quantum systems, and the Grobe-Haake-Sommers conjecture proposes that systems with chaotic classical counterparts should exhibit level repulsion in the Lindbladian spectrum. Here we point out an important flaw in this analogy: Hamiltonian and Lindbladian spectra behave differently and have distinct physical interpretations, and one should therefore not expect the latter to provide a reliable diagnostic. For Lindbladians, the late-time dynamics are not determined by the bulk of the eigenvalues but only by those eigenvalues -- and their corresponding eigenvectors -- with small real parts. Combined with the strong non-normality typical of Lindbladians, this allows situations in which the level statistics can be tuned almost arbitrarily without affecting the dynamics on either short or long time scales. We explicitly demonstrate this phenomenon and provide examples in which Ginibre level repulsion arises while the system dynamics at no time show signatures of chaos. We further relate this mechanism to the emergence of a non-Hermitian skin effect in Liouville space, linking boundary-induced eigenvector localization to the observed spectral instability. Our results show that level statistics cannot universally serve as a reliable diagnostic of quantum chaos in open quantum systems and highlight the need for alternative diagnostics that remain robust in strongly non-normal regimes.
We study generic open quantum systems with Markovian dissipation, focusing on a class of stochastic Liouvillian operators of Lindblad form with independent random dissipation channels (jump operators) and a random Hamiltonian. We perform a thorough numerical study, focusing on global spectral features, the spectral gap, and the steady-state purity and statistics. We establish that all properties follow three different regimes as a function of the dissipation strength, whose boundaries depend on the particular observable. Within each regime, we determine the scaling exponents with the dissipation strength and system size. On the analytical side, we compute the average spectral gap at arbitrary dissipation and provide simple closed-form expressions for the asymptotic values at strong and weak dissipation strength. We also consider spectral correlations in generic complex spectra, such as that of the Liouvillian. We introduce and study, both analytically and numerically, the complex ratio of the nearest-neighbor spacing by next-to-nearest-neighbor spacing. Besides the usual level repulsion, we find that complex spacing ratios have a nontrivial angular dependence which offers a distinct signature of quantum chaos. It distinguishes integrable systems, which support the flat ratio distribution characteristic of Poisson statistics, and chaotic dissipative quantum systems, which conform to Random Matrix Theory statistics. We apply this new signature of quantum chaos to random Liouvillians and boundary-driven dissipative spin-chains. The results of this thesis can help understand the long-time dynamics, steady-state properties, and spectral correlations of generic dissipative systems.
Generators of continuous-time quantum Markovian evolution, known as Lindblad operators, play a key role in the theory of open quantum systems. The question of how to define and characterize random Lindblad operators has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Purely dissipative random Lindbladians have been extensively studied using toolboxes of free probability and non-Hermitian random matrix theories, which helped to uncover a characteristic lemon-like spectral support. In this work, we focus on random Lindbladians with a Hamiltonian component. We analyze three ensembles of increasing complexity, designed to illustrate the joint effects of dissipative and Hamiltonian dynamics. While the first two allow for an exact analytic treatment with standard probabilistic and scalar-valued free-probability methods, the most general case requires the more general framework of operator-valued free probability. We explain how the spectral support changes with the relative Hamiltonian strength and the rank of the dissipative component and characterize the effect of Hamiltonian-induced spectral squeezing.
In this licenciate thesis, based on two articles, we discuss the properties of open quantum systems and investigate how their dynamics can be used to design a synthetic lattice framework and how their spectrabehave based on two. The first article presents an extension of the Fock state lattice (FSL) framework to open quantum systems. Using the Liouville space representation, density matrices can be vectorized and the dynamics are generated by a linear operator, the Liouvillian, allowing for the introduction of Liouville-Fock state lattices (LFSLs). This framework provides an intuitive and visual understanding of the dynamics of open quantum systems and shows how environmental effects can give rise to phenomena such as directional transport, sources and sinks, typical phenomena occurring in classical processes. As an example, we show how frustration in LFSL can be induced by the environment. The second article in the work focuses on non-normality of Liouvillians and spectral diagnostics of chaos. Non-normal operators are characterized by the fact that their eigenvectors are not orthogonal, which leads to the spectrum exhibiting strong sensitivity to perturbations. We show that strong non-normality can give rise to random matrix-like spectral statistics without the system dynamics exhibiting chaotic signatures. Therefore, we conclude that this violates established assumptions and points to the need for alternative methods to characterize chaotic dynamics in open quantum systems.
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) underpins much of our modern understanding of the thermalization of closed quantum many-body systems. Here, we investigate the statistical properties of observables in the eigenbasis of the Lindbladian operator of a Markovian open quantum system. We demonstrate the validity of a Lindbladian ETH ansatz through extensive numerical simulations of several physical models. To highlight the robustness of Lindbladian ETH, we consider what we dub the dilute-click regime of the model, in which one postselects only quantum trajectories with a finite fraction of quantum jumps. The average dynamics are generated by a nontrace-preserving Liouvillian, and we show that the Lindbladian ETH ansatz still holds in this case. On the other hand, the no-click limit is a singular point at which the Lindbladian reduces to a doubled non-Hermitian Hamiltonian and Lindbladian ETH breaks down.