A time-integrated measure of complexity is proposed for diagnosing the degree of quantum ergodicity. The scrambling dynamics of maximally entangled states within the ensemble of unitary evolutions are quantified by applying numerical bootstrapped realizations of an ensemble of Hamiltonians, probing different unitary paths. Using Rosenzweig-Porter ensembles, we show that the integrated spread complexity provides a fine-grained resolution across different ergodic regimes. This approach offers a robust method for diagnosing quantum chaos from early to late times.
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7 pages, 4 Figures, Notebooks and dataset are available on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/19707590
A time-integrated measure of complexity is proposed for diagnosing the degree of quantum ergodicity. The scrambling dynamics of maximally entangled states within the ensemble of unitary evolutions are quantified by applying numerical bootstrapped realizations of an ensemble of Hamiltonians, probing different unitary paths. Using Rosenzweig-Porter ensembles, we show that the integrated spread complexity provides a fine-grained resolution across different ergodic regimes. This approach offers a robust method for diagnosing quantum chaos from early to late times.
Entanglement is a defining feature of many-body quantum systems and is an essential requirement for quantum computing. It is therefore useful to study physical processes which generate entanglement within a large system, as they maybe replicated for applications involving the said requirements in quantum information processing. A possible avenue to maximize entanglement generation is to rely on the phenomena of information scrambling, i.e. transport of initially localized information throughout the system. Here the rationale is that the spread of information carries with it an inherent capacity of entanglement generation. Scrambling greatly depends upon the dynamical nature of the system Hamiltonian, and the interplay between entanglement generation and information scrambling maybe investigated taking a chain of interacting spins on a one dimensional lattice. This system is analogous to an array of qubits and this relative simplicity implies that the resulting unitary dynamics can be efficiently simulated using present-day cloud based NISQ devices. In our present work, we consider such a spin model which is made up of nearest and next nearest neighbor XXZ Model, along with an introduced coupling term λ. This coupling term serves as a tuning parameter which modifies the dynamical nature of the system from the integrable to the quantum chaotic regime. In order to quantify the entanglement generated within the system we use the more general multipartite metric which computes the average entanglement across all system bipartitions to obtain a global picture of the entanglement structure within the entire system. Further to make our study initial state independent, we consider an ensemble of random initial states and evaluate the multipartite entanglement generated for each of these states under time evolution. We find clear differences in the entanglement measures as the system undergoes through different regimes. We also analyze the fluctuations present within our entanglement metric and find a distinct pattern as we head from the integrable to the chaotic regime.
Abstract Scrambling is a process by which the state of a quantum system is effectively randomized due to the global entanglement that “hides” initially localized quantum information. Closely related notions include quantum chaos and thermalization. Such phenomena play key roles in the study of quantum gravity, many-body physics, quantum statistical mechanics, quantum information etc. Scrambling can exhibit different complexities depending on the degree of randomness it produces. For example, notice that the complete randomization implies scrambling, but the converse does not hold; in fact, there is a significant complexity gap between them. In this work, we lay the mathematical foundations of studying randomness complexities beyond scrambling by entanglement properties. We do so by analyzing the generalized (in particular Rényi) entanglement entropies of designs, i.e. ensembles of unitary channels or pure states that mimic the uniformly random distribution (given by the Haar measure) up to certain moments. A main collective conclusion is that the Rényi entanglement entropies averaged over designs of the same order are almost maximal. This links the orders of entropy and design, and therefore suggests Rényi entanglement entropies as diagnostics of the randomness complexity of corresponding designs. Such complexities form a hierarchy between information scrambling and Haar randomness. As a strong separation result, we prove the existence of (state) 2-designs such that the Rényi entanglement entropies of higher orders can be bounded away from the maximum. However, we also show that the min entanglement entropy is maximized by designs of order only logarithmic in the dimension of the system. In other words, logarithmic-designs already achieve the complexity of Haar in terms of entanglement, which we also call max-scrambling. This result leads to a generalization of the fast scrambling conjecture, that max-scrambling can be achieved by physical dynamics in time roughly linear in the number of degrees of freedom. This paper is an extended version of Phys. Rev. Lett. 120 (2018) 130502 [1].
Information scrambling, the process by which quantum information spreads and becomes effectively inaccessible, is central to modern quantum statistical physics and quantum chaos. These lecture notes provide an introduction to information scrambling from both static and dynamical perspectives. The spectral properties of reduced density matrices arising from Haar-random states are developed through the geometry of the unitary group and the universal results of random matrix theory. This geometric framework yields universal, model-independent predictions for entanglement and spectral statistics, capturing generic features of quantum chaos without reference to microscopic details. Dynamical diagnostics such as the spectral form factor and out-of-time-ordered correlators further reveal the onset of chaos in time-dependent evolution.
The notes are aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students in physics, mathematics, and computer science who are interested in the connections between quantum chaos, information dynamics, and quantum computing. Concepts such as entanglement growth, Haar randomness, random-matrix statistics, and unitary t-designs are introduced through their realization in random quantum circuits and circuit complexity. The same mathematical framework also underpins modern quantum-device benchmarking, where approximate unitary designs and random circuits translate geometric ideas into quantitative tools for assessing fidelity, noise, and scrambling efficiency in real quantum processors.
Fast scrambling, quantified by the exponential initial growth of out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs), is the ability to efficiently spread quantum correlations among the degrees of freedom of interacting systems and constitutes a characteristic signature of local unstable dynamics. As such, it may equally manifest both in systems displaying chaos or in integrable systems around criticality. Here we go beyond these extreme regimes with an exhaustive study of the interplay between local criticality and chaos right at the intricate phase-space region where the integrability-chaos transition first appears. We address systems with a well-defined classical (mean-field) limit, as coupled large spins and Bose-Hubbard chains, thus allowing for semiclassical analysis. Our aim is to investigate the dependence of the exponential growth of the OTOCs, defining the quantum Lyapunov exponent λ_{q} on quantities derived from the classical system with mixed phase space, specifically the local stability exponent of a fixed point λ_{loc} as well as the maximal Lyapunov exponent λ_{L} of the chaotic region around it. By extensive numerical simulations covering a wide range of parameters we give support to a conjectured linear dependence 2λ_{q}=aλ_{L}+bλ_{loc}, providing a simple route to characterize scrambling at the border between chaos and integrability.
Operator scrambling, which governs the spread of quantum information in many-body systems, is a central concept in both condensed matter and high-energy physics. Accurately capturing the emergent properties of these systems remains a formidable challenge for classical computation, while quantum simulators have emerged as a powerful tool to address this complexity. In this work, we reveal a fundamental connection between operator scrambling and the reliability of quantum simulations. We show that the Trotter error in simulating operator dynamics is bounded by the degree of operator scrambling, providing the most refined analysis of Trotter errors in operator dynamics so far. Furthermore, we investigate the entanglement properties of the evolved states, revealing that sufficient entanglement can lead to error scaling governed by the normalized Frobenius norms of both the observables of interest and the error operator, thereby enhancing simulation robustness and efficiency compared to previous works. We also show that even in regimes where the system's entanglement remains low, operator-induced entanglement can still emerge and suppress simulation errors. Our results unveil a comprehensive relationship between Trotterization, operator scrambling, and entanglement, offering new perspectives for optimizing quantum simulations.
Scrambling is a process by which the state of a quantum system is effectively randomized due to the global entanglement that hides initially localized quantum information. In this work, we lay the mathematical foundations of studying randomness complexities beyond scrambling by entanglement properties. We do so by analyzing the generalized (in particular Renyi) entanglement entropies of designs, i.e. ensembles of unitary channels or pure states that mimic the uniformly random distribution (given by the Haar measure) up to certain moments. A main collective conclusion is that the Renyi entanglement entropies averaged over designs of the same order are almost maximal. This links the orders of entropy and design, and therefore suggests Renyi entanglement entropies as diagnostics of the randomness complexity of corresponding designs. Such complexities form a hierarchy between information scrambling and Haar randomness. As a strong separation result, we prove the existence of (state) 2-designs such that the Renyi entanglement entropies of higher orders can be bounded away from the maximum. However, we also show that the min entanglement entropy is maximized by designs of order only logarithmic in the dimension of the system. In other words, logarithmic-designs already achieve the complexity of Haar in terms of entanglement, which we also call max-scrambling. This result leads to a generalization of the fast scrambling conjecture, that max-scrambling can be achieved by physical dynamics in time roughly linear in the number of degrees of freedom.