Influence matrices encode the action exerted on local subsystems by the rest of an extended quantum many-body system during their evolution. Thus, knowledge of the influence matrix facilitates computationally efficient simulations of local dynamics. Here we propose a new systematic approach to generating quantum circuits with complex dynamics for which the influence matrices can be written down exactly. In contrast to previous frameworks of this kind, such as dual-unitary circuits, the resulting influence matrices are non-Markovian, exhibiting nontrivial temporal correlations. We explicitly construct a broad family of circuits of this kind, based on dressing free-fermion (matchgate) circuits with appropriately chosen interaction terms. We show that, contrary to previous solvable instances, these circuits produce patterns of correlations that closely resemble that of typical many-body systems. Our approach can be directly interpreted in terms of an error correction scheme where the terms breaking the solvability of the influence matrices play the role of errors.
Influence matrices encode the action exerted on local subsystems by the rest of an extended quantum many-body system during their evolution. Thus, knowledge of the influence matrix facilitates computationally efficient simulations of local dynamics. Here we propose a new systematic approach to generating quantum circuits with complex dynamics for which the influence matrices can be written down exactly. In contrast to previous frameworks of this kind, such as dual-unitary circuits, the resulting influence matrices are non-Markovian, exhibiting nontrivial temporal correlations. We explicitly construct a broad family of circuits of this kind, based on dressing free-fermion (matchgate) circuits with appropriately chosen interaction terms. We show that, contrary to previous solvable instances, these circuits produce patterns of correlations that closely resemble that of typical many-body systems. Our approach can be directly interpreted in terms of an error correction scheme where the terms breaking the solvability of the influence matrices play the role of errors.
Characterizing nonequilibrium dynamics in quantum many-body systems is a challenging frontier of physics. In this Letter, we systematically construct solvable nonintegrable quantum circuits that exhibit exact hidden Markovian subsystem dynamics. This feature thus enables accurately calculating local observables for arbitrary evolution time. Utilizing the influence matrix method, we show that the influence of the time-evolved global system on a finite subsystem can be analytically described by sequential, time-local quantum channels acting on the subsystem with an ancilla of finite Hilbert space dimension. The realization of exact hidden Markovian property is facilitated by a solvable condition on the underlying two-site gates in the quantum circuit. We further present several concrete examples with varying local Hilbert space dimensions to demonstrate our approach.
Exactly solvable models in quantum many-body dynamics provide valuable insights into many interesting physical phenomena and serve as platforms for rigorously investigating fundamental theoretical questions. Nevertheless, they are extremely rare and existing solvable models and solution techniques have serious limitations. In this paper, we present a family of exactly solvable unitary circuits that model quantum many-body dynamics in discrete space and time. Unlike many previous solvable models, one can exactly compute the full quantum dynamics initialized from any matrix product state in this family of models. The time evolution of local observables and correlations, the linear growth of Rényi entanglement entropy, spatiotemporal correlations, and out-of-time-order correlations are all exactly computable. A key property of these models enabling the exact solution is that any time-evolved local operator is an exact matrix product operator with a finite bond dimension, even at arbitrarily long times, which we prove using the underlying C * -(weak) Hopf algebra structure along with tensor network techniques. We lay down the general framework for construction and solution of this family of models, and give several explicit examples. In particular, we study in detail a model constructed out of a C * -weak Hopf algebra that is very close to a Floquet version of the PXP model, and the exact results we obtain may shed light on the phenomenon of quantum many-body scars, and more generally, Floquet quantum dynamics in constrained systems.
In recent years dual-unitary circuits and their multi-unitary generalizations have emerged as exactly solvable yet chaotic models of quantum many-body dynamics. However, a systematic picture for the solvability of multi-unitary dynamics remains missing. We present a framework encompassing a large class of such non-integrable models with exactly solvable dynamics, which we term \emph{completely reducible} circuits. In these circuits, the entanglement membrane determining operator growth and entanglement dynamics can be characterized analytically. Completely reducible circuits extend the notion of space-time symmetry to more general lattice geometries, breaking dual-unitarity globally but not locally, and allow for a rich phenomenology going beyond dual-unitarity. As example, we introduce circuits that support four and five directions of information flow. We derive a general expression for the entanglement line tension in terms of the pattern of information flow in spacetime. The solvability is shown to be related to the absence of knots of this information flow, connecting entanglement dynamics to the Kauffman bracket as knot invariant. Building on these results, we propose that in general non-integrable dynamics the curvature of the entanglement line tension can be interpreted as a density of information transport. Our results provide a new and unified framework for exactly solvable models of many-body quantum chaos, encompassing and extending known constructions.
Recent experimental and theoretical works have made much progress toward understanding nonequilibrium phenomena in thermalizing systems, which act as thermal baths for their small subsystems, and many-body localized systems, which fail to do so.The description of time evolution in many-body systems is generally challenging due to the dynamical generation of quantum entanglement.In this work, we introduce an approach to study quantum many-body dynamics, inspired by the Feynman-Vernon influence functional.Focusing on a family of interacting, Floquet spin chains, we consider a Keldysh path-integral description of the dynamics.The central object in our approach is the influence matrix, which describes the effect of the system on the dynamics of a local subsystem.For translationally invariant models, we formulate a self-consistency equation for the influence matrix.For certain special values of the model parameters, we obtain an exact solution which represents a perfect dephaser (PD).Physically, a PD corresponds to a many-body system that acts as a perfectly Markovian bath on itself: at each period, it measures every spin.For the models considered here, we establish that PD points include dual-unitary circuits investigated in recent works.In the vicinity of PD points, the system is not perfectly Markovian, but rather acts as a bath with a short memory time.In this case, we demonstrate that the self-consistency equation can be solved using matrix-product states (MPS) methods, as the influence matrix temporal entanglement is low.A combination of analytical insights and MPS computations allows us to characterize the structure of the influence matrix in terms of an effective "statistical-mechanics" description.We finally illustrate the predictive power of this description by analytically computing how quickly an embedded impurity spin thermalizes.The influence matrix approach formulated here provides an intuitive view of the quantum many-body dynamics problem, opening a path to constructing models of thermalizing dynamics that are solvable or can be efficiently treated by MPS-based methods and to further characterizing quantum ergodicity or lack thereof.
Influence-solvability: a systematic theory of (1+1)D solvability and its application to brickwork circuits
`Solvable' circuits, such as dual unitaries and its generalisations, have arisen as paradigmatic examples of tractable chaotic non-equilibrium dynamics, both in classical and quantum systems. However, while increasingly complicated sufficient conditions have been proposed, a systematic theory classifying and understanding general features of Solvable circuits is missing. In this work we develop such a theory by deriving the most general local necessary and sufficient conditions under which a (1+1)D circuit is Solvable. Concretely, we define a circuit to be \emph{influence-solvable} if its influence matrix, representing the `bath' generated by its own evolution, is given by a uniform MPS with finite bond-dimension χ. This property allows for efficient computation of subsystem dynamics and essentially contains all known examples of Solvable circuits. The set of necessary and sufficient local conditions follows from a new version of the fundamental theorem of MPS for open boundary conditions. Next, we apply our theory to brickwork circuits with χ=1 influence-solvability and perform a systematic classification of classical brickwork circuits with local dimension up to d=3 and quantum brickwork circuits with d=2. Our search reveals new Solvable circuits that are not captured by known conditions.
In this work, we present a quantum algorithm for simulating non-Markovian quantum dynamics based on the Feynman-Vernon influence functional formalism, which provides an exact description of the dynamics of a quantum system linearly coupled to a harmonic bath. In condensed-phase environments, the bath correlation functions typically decay over time, allowing them to be truncated beyond a finite time scale and enabling an iterative propagation scheme. We implement the finite-memory propagator using a fast-forwarding algorithm that achieves constant circuit depth with respect to the number of propagation steps, while the nonunitary matrices are realized on quantum circuits using unitary dilation. We further exploit the structure of the unitary dilation to show that the additional circuit complexity introduced by the dilation scales polynomially with the number of dilation ancilla qubits, while the dominant computational cost arises from the implementation of the underlying 1-dilation. The algorithm is compared with classical benchmark calculations for the spin-boson model and shows close agreement. Together, these developments establish a quantum-circuit framework for fast forwarding non-Markovian dynamics and identify the principal computational bottlenecks that must be overcome to achieve quantum advantage.