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arXiv:2604.27170

Light-Cone Structure of Propagation of Entanglement

Israel Michael Sigal

quant-phmath-phmath.FASubmitted Apr 29, 2026• Announced May 1, 2026• 0 citations• Revised Jun 9, 2026 (v2)
v1 · Apr 29, 2026v2 · Jun 9, 2026
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Abstract

For a wide class of bipartite systems with localized couplings, we establish existence of an effective light-cone for propagation of entanglement. This result yields a hard lower bound on the time it takes, under ideal conditions (no loss, no decoherence), to transport entanglement to a distant location (say, a node of a graph-structured quantum network), or to maintain it there.

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For a wide class of bipartite systems with localized couplings, we establish existence of an effective light-cone for propagation of entanglement. This result yields a hard lower bound on the time it takes, under ideal conditions (no loss, no decoherence), to transport entanglement to a distant location (say, a node of a graph-structured quantum network), or to maintain it there.
In a bipartite system subject to decoherence from two separate reservoirs, entanglement is typically destroyed faster than where there is a single reservoir. Surprisingly, however, the existence of separate reservoirs can also have a beneficial entangling effect: if the qubits are coupled and driven externally by a classical field, the system ends in a stationary state characterized by a finite degree of entanglement. This phenomenon occurs only in a certain region of the parameter space and the structure of the stationary state has a universal form which does not depend on the initial state or on the specific physical realization of the qubits. We show that the entanglement thus generated can be propagated within a quantum network using simple local unitary operations. We suggest the use of such systems as 'batteries of entanglement' in quantum circuits.
In a bipartite system subject to decoherence from two separate reservoirs, entanglement is typically destroyed faster than where there is a single reservoir. Surprisingly, however, the existence of separate reservoirs can also have a beneficial entangling effect: if the qubits are coupled and driven externally by a classical field, the system ends in a stationary state characterized by a finite degree of entanglement. This phenomenon occurs only in a certain region of the parameter space and the structure of the stationary state has a universal form which does not depend on the initial state or on the specific physical realization of the qubits. We show that the entanglement thus generated can be propagated within a quantum network using simple local unitary operations. We suggest the use of such systems as 'batteries of entanglement' in quantum circuits.
The speed limit of information propagation is one of the most fundamental features in non-equilibrium physics. The region of information propagation by finite-time dynamics is approximately restricted inside the effective light cone that is formulated by the Lieb-Robinson bound. To date, extensive studies have been conducted to identify the shape of effective light cones in most experimentally relevant many-body systems. However, the Lieb-Robinson bound in the interacting boson systems, one of the most ubiquitous quantum systems in nature, has remained a critical open problem for a long time. This study reveals a tight effective light cone to limit the information propagation in interacting bosons, where the shape of the effective light cone depends on the spatial dimension. To achieve it, we prove that the speed for bosons to clump together is finite, which in turn leads to the error guarantee of the boson number truncation at each site. Furthermore, we applied the method to provide a provably efficient algorithm for simulating the interacting boson systems. The results of this study settle the notoriously challenging problem and provide the foundation for elucidating the complexity of many-body boson systems.
In nonrelativistic quantum theories with short-range Hamiltonians, a velocity vvv can be chosen such that the influence of any local perturbation is approximately confined to within a distance rrr until a time $t\ensuremath{\sim}r/v$, thereby defining a linear light cone and giving rise to an emergent notion of locality. In systems with power-law ($1/{r}^{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$) interactions, when $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ exceeds the dimension DDD, an analogous bound confines influences to within a distance rrr only until a time $t\ensuremath{\sim}(\ensuremath{\alpha}/v)\mathrm{log}r$, suggesting that the velocity, as calculated from the slope of the light cone, may grow exponentially in time. We rule out this possibility; light cones of power-law interacting systems are bounded by a polynomial for $\ensuremath{\alpha}>2D$ and become linear as $\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$. Our results impose strong new constraints on the growth of correlations and the production of entangled states in a variety of rapidly emerging, long-range interacting atomic, molecular, and optical systems.
In locally interacting quantum many-body systems, the velocity of information propagation is finitely bounded, and a linear light cone can be defined.Outside the light cone, the amount of information rapidly decays with distance.When systems have long-range interactions, it is highly nontrivial whether such a linear light cone exists.Herein, we consider generic long-range interacting systems with decaying interactions, such as R -α with distance R. We prove the existence of the linear light cone for α > 2D þ 1 (D, the spatial dimension), where we obtain the Lieb-Robinson bound as k½O i ðtÞ; O j k ≲ t 2Dþ1 ðR -vtÞ -α with v ¼ Oð1Þ for two arbitrary operators O i and O j separated by a distance R.Moreover, we provide an explicit quantum-state transfer protocol that achieves the above bound up to a constant coefficient and violates the linear light cone for α < 2D þ 1.In the regime of α > 2D þ 1, our result characterizes the best general constraints on the information spreading.