Information scrambling is a hallmark of quantum chaos and thermalization in isolated quantum many-body systems. We investigate scrambling dynamics in the all-to-all interacting spin Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK)-$q$ model using both pure- and mixed-state entanglement measures. We show that von-Neumann and Rényi entropies exhibit rapid growth followed by saturation near Haar-random values, signaling efficient scrambling. The scrambling rate reveals a nontrivial dependence on the interaction order, system size, and Hamiltonian scaling. We further employ mixed-state entanglement as a powerful probe of information scrambling. We numerically find a universal relation between the Rényi-1/2 mutual information and entanglement negativity for minimal interaction order in the early growth regime. Furthermore, entanglement negativity displays a Page-curve-like behavior under unequal subsystem partitioning, characterized by the birth, spread, and eventual death of quantum correlations. Our results provide a generic description of information scrambling using entanglement dynamics in all-to-all interacting spin systems with multi-body interactions.
Information scrambling is a hallmark of quantum chaos and thermalization in isolated quantum many-body systems. We investigate scrambling dynamics in the all-to-all interacting spin Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK)-q model using both pure- and mixed-state entanglement measures. We show that von-Neumann and Rényi entropies exhibit rapid growth followed by saturation near Haar-random values, signaling efficient scrambling. The scrambling rate reveals a nontrivial dependence on the interaction order, system size, and Hamiltonian scaling. We further employ mixed-state entanglement as a powerful probe of information scrambling. We numerically find a universal relation between the Rényi-1/2 mutual information and entanglement negativity for minimal interaction order in the early growth regime. Furthermore, entanglement negativity displays a Page-curve-like behavior under unequal subsystem partitioning, characterized by the birth, spread, and eventual death of quantum correlations. Our results provide a generic description of information scrambling using entanglement dynamics in all-to-all interacting spin systems with multi-body interactions.
We systematically investigate scrambling (or delocalizing) processes of quantum information encoded in quantum many-body systems by using numerical exact diagonalization. As a measure of scrambling, we adopt the tripartite mutual information (TMI) that becomes negative when quantum information is delocalized. We clarify that scrambling is an independent property of the integrability of Hamiltonians; TMI can be negative or positive for both integrable and nonintegrable systems. This implies that scrambling is a separate concept from conventional quantum chaos characterized by nonintegrability. Specifically, we argue that there are a few exceptional initial states that do not exhibit scrambling, and show that such exceptional initial states have small effective dimensions. Furthermore, we calculate TMI in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, a fermionic toy model of quantum gravity. We find that disorder does not make scrambling slower but makes it smoother in the SYK model, in contrast to many-body localization in spin chains.
Understanding how quantum chaotic systems generate entanglement can provide insight into their microscopic chaotic dynamics and can help distinguish between different classes of chaotic behavior. Using von Neumann entanglement entropy, we study a nonentangled state evolved under three variants of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model with a finite number of Majorana fermions N. All the variants exhibit linear entanglement growth at early times, which at late times saturates to a universal value consistent with random matrix theory (RMT), but their growth rates differ. We interpret this as a large-N effect, arising from the enhanced nonlocality of fermionic operators in SYK and binary SYK, absent in spin operators of the spin-SYK model. Numerically, we find that these differences emerge gradually with increasing N. Although all variants are quantum chaotic, their entanglement dynamics reflect varying scrambling rates and indicate that the entanglement production rate serves as a fine-grained probe of scrambling beyond conventional measures. To probe its effect on the thermalization properties of these models, we study the two-point autocorrelation function, finding no differences between the SYK variants, but deviations from RMT predictions for N≥24, particularly near the crossover from exponential decay to saturation regime.
A bstract In closed quantum many-body systems, initially localized information spreads throughout the system and becomes highly complex. This phenomenon, known as information scrambling, is closely related to entropy growth and quantum thermalization. Recent studies have shown that dissipation in open systems can hinder information scrambling, driving the system into a dissipative phase when the system-bath coupling is strong. However, the signature of this scrambling transition in entropy dynamics remains unexplored. In this work, we unveil a novel phenomenon in open quantum systems, termed entropy accumulation, which occurs exclusively within the scrambling phase. By generalizing the study of perturbative Page curve in closed systems, we consider a setup in which a probe is weakly coupled to a system that is already interacting with a bath. We calculate the increase in the second Rényi entropy induced by an external impulse on the system, after tracing out the probe. Despite the system-probe coupling being weak, the entropy continues to increase and eventually saturates at a finite value due to operator growth. In contrast, the entropy increase is limited by the coupling strength in the dissipative phase. The theoretical prediction is derived from both general arguments and explicit examples using generalized Boltzmann equations or SYK solvable models. Our results offer new insights into the intriguing relationship between entropy dynamics and information scrambling in open quantum systems.
Abstract Quantum information scrambling refers to the loss of local recoverability of quantum information, which has found widespread attention from high energy physics to quantum computing. In the present analysis we propose a possible starting point for the development of a comprehensive framework for the thermodynamics of scrambling. To this end, we prove that the growth of entanglement as quantified by the mutual information is lower bounded by the time-dependent change of out-of-time-ordered correlator. We further show that the rate of increase of the mutual information can be upper bounded by the sum of local entropy productions, and the exchange entropy arising from the flow of information between separate partitions of a quantum system. Our results are illustrated for the ion trap system, that was recently used to verify information scrambling in an experiment, and for the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model.
This work develops tools to understand how quantum information spreads, scrambles, and is reshaped by measurements in many-body systems. First, I study scrambling and pseudorandomness in the Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, quantifying pseudorandomness using unitary k-designs and frame potentials. Using Keldysh path integrals with replicas and disorder averaging, I obtain analytic control of the approach to randomness, identify collective modes that delay convergence to Haar-like behavior, and estimate design times as functions of model parameters, clarifying links between scrambling, complexity growth, and random-circuit phenomenology. Second, I construct a field theory for weakly measured SYK clusters. Starting from a system-ancilla description and a continuum monitoring limit, and using fermionic coherent states with replicas and disorder averaging, I derive a nonlinear sigma model that captures measurement back-action and the competition between interaction-induced scrambling and information extraction, predicting characteristic crossover scales and response signatures that distinguish weak monitoring from fully unitary evolution. Third, I develop a strong-disorder renormalization group for measurement-only SYK clusters, based on the SO(2n) replica algebra and Dasgupta-Ma decimation rules. The flow shows features reminiscent of infinite-randomness behavior, but an order-of-limits subtlety renders the leading recursions non-robust, so the analytic evidence for an infinite-randomness fixed point is inconclusive, even though the average second Renyi entropy displays logarithmic scaling. Together, these results provide a unified language to diagnose when many-body dynamics generate operational randomness and how measurements redirect that flow.
The growth of information scrambling, captured by out-of-time-order correlation functions (OTOCs), is a central indicator of the nature of many-body quantum dynamics. Here, we compute analytically the complete time dependence of the OTOC for an integrable Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, N Majoranas with random two-body interactions of infinite range, coupled to a Markovian bath at finite temperature. In the limit of no coupling to the bath, the time evolution of scrambling experiences different stages. For t≲sqrt[N], after an initial polynomial growth, the OTOC approaches saturation in a power-law fashion with oscillations superimposed. At t∼sqrt[N], the OTOC reverses trend and starts to decrease linearly in time. The reason for this linear decrease is that, despite being a subleading 1/N effect, the OTOC in this region is governed by the spectral form factor of the antisymmetric couplings of the SYK model. The linear decrease stops at t∼2N, the Heisenberg time, where saturation occurs. The effect of the environment is an overall exponential decay of the OTOC for times longer than the inverse of the coupling strength to the bath. The oscillations at t≲sqrt[N] indicate lack of thermalization-a desired feature for better performance of quantum information devices.