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arXiv:2610.07143

Kardar-Parisi-Zhang superdiffusion in chaotic quantum circuits

Rustem Sharipov, Urban Duh, Sun Woo P. Kim, Friedrich Hübner

quant-phcond-mat.stat-mechnlin.CDSubmitted Oct 5, 2026• Announced Oct 7, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We construct a family of chaotic brickwork quantum circuits exhibiting superdiffusive transport with dynamical exponent $z=3/2$ in the full Kardar--Parisi--Zhang (KPZ) universality class. This is enabled by the equilibrium current associated with a inhomogeneous conserved density having a nontrivial dependence on the chemical potential. Using nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics, we derive the propagation velocity, broadening scale, and universal scaling form of the charge correlation function from microscopic equilibrium properties. Tensor-network simulations of a two-site spin-$1$ (qutrit) circuit reproduce these parameter-free predictions, including the full stationary KPZ profile. We further construct a three-site spin-$\frac12$ (qubit) circuit, where transport varies from diffusive to superdiffusive with the chemical potential, while long-lived coherent quasiparticles delay the convergence of the profile to the KPZ scaling form. Our results establish that KPZ superdiffusion in quantum systems is not restricted to fine-tuned integrable models.

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We construct a family of chaotic brickwork quantum circuits exhibiting superdiffusive transport with dynamical exponent z=3/2z=3/2z=3/2 in the full Kardar--Parisi--Zhang (KPZ) universality class. This is enabled by the equilibrium current associated with a inhomogeneous conserved density having a nontrivial dependence on the chemical potential. Using nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics, we derive the propagation velocity, broadening scale, and universal scaling form of the charge correlation function from microscopic equilibrium properties. Tensor-network simulations of a two-site spin-111 (qutrit) circuit reproduce these parameter-free predictions, including the full stationary KPZ profile. We further construct a three-site spin-12\frac1221​ (qubit) circuit, where transport varies from diffusive to superdiffusive with the chemical potential, while long-lived coherent quasiparticles delay the convergence of the profile to the KPZ scaling form. Our results establish that KPZ superdiffusion in quantum systems is not restricted to fine-tuned integrable models.
Isotropic integrable spin chains such as the Heisenberg model feature superdiffusive spin transport belonging to an as-yet-unidentified dynamical universality class closely related to that of Kardar, Parisi, and Zhang (KPZ). To determine whether these results extend to more generic one-dimensional models, particularly those realizable in quantum simulators, we investigate spin and energy transport in non-integrable, long-range Heisenberg models using state-of-the-art tensor network methods. Despite the lack of integrability and the asymptotic expectation of diffusion, for power-law models (with exponent 2<α<∞2 < α< \infty2<α<∞) we observe long-lived z=3/2z=3/2z=3/2 superdiffusive spin transport and two-point correlators consistent with KPZ scaling functions, up to times t∼103/Jt \sim 10^3/Jt∼103/J. We conjecture that this KPZ-like transport is due to the proximity of such power-law-interacting models to the integrable family of Inozemtsev models, which we show to also exhibit KPZ-like spin transport across all interaction ranges. Finally, we consider anisotropic spin models naturally realized in Rydberg atom arrays and ultracold polar molecules, demonstrating that a wide range of long-lived, non-diffusive transport can be observed in experimental settings.
The Heisenberg spin chain is a canonical integrable model. As such, it features stable ballistically propagating quasiparticles, but spin transport is subballistic at any nonzero temperature: An initially localized spin fluctuation spreads in time t to a width t2/3. This exponent as well as the functional form of the dynamical spin correlation function suggest that spin transport is in the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang (KPZ) universality class. However, the full counting statistics of magnetization is manifestly incompatible with KPZ scaling. A simple two-mode hydrodynamic description, derivable from microscopic principles, captures both the KPZ scaling of the correlation function and the coarse features of the full counting statistics, but remains to be numerically validated. These results generalize to any integrable spin chain invariant under a continuous nonabelian symmetry and are surprisingly robust against moderately strong integrability-breaking perturbations that respect the nonabelian symmetry.
The Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class describes the coarse-grained behavior of a wealth of classical stochastic models. Surprisingly, KPZ universality was recently conjectured to also describe spin transport in the one-dimensional quantum Heisenberg model. We tested this conjecture by experimentally probing transport in a cold-atom quantum simulator via the relaxation of domain walls in spin chains of up to 50 spins. We found that domain-wall relaxation is indeed governed by the KPZ dynamical exponent z = 3/2 and that the occurrence of KPZ scaling requires both integrability and a nonabelian SU(2) symmetry. Finally, we leveraged the single-spin–sensitive detection enabled by the quantum gas microscope to measure an observable based on spin-transport statistics. Our results yield a clear signature of the nonlinearity that is a hallmark of KPZ universality.
Abstract Understanding how hydrodynamic behaviour emerges from the unitary evolution of the many-particle Schrödinger equation is a central goal of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. In this work we implement a digital simulation of the discrete time quantum dynamics of a spin- 12\frac{1}{2}21​ 1 2 XXZ spin chain on a noisy near-term quantum device, and we extract the high temperature transport exponent at the isotropic point. We simulate the temporal decay of the relevant spin correlation function at high temperature using a pseudo-random state generated by a random circuit that is specifically tailored to the ibmq-montreal 27 qubit device. The resulting output is a spin excitation on a homogeneous background on a 21 qubit chain on the device. From the subsequent discrete time dynamics on the device we are able to extract an anomalous super-diffusive exponent consistent with the conjectured Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) scaling at the isotropic point. Furthermore we simulate the restoration of spin diffusion with the application of an integrability breaking potential.
We study the single-particle Green's function G(x,t)=⟨σx−(0)σ0+(t)⟩G(x,t)=\langle σ^-_x(0)σ^+_0(t)\rangleG(x,t)=⟨σx−​(0)σ0+​(t)⟩ in one-dimensional particle-number-conserving random unitary circuits coupled to an external bath. For fixed spacetime disorder, we argue that G(x,t)G(x,t)G(x,t) is governed, in both the strong- and weak-noise limits, by directed waves in a random medium. We find Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) scaling in the wandering statistics of the normalized spatial distribution p(x,t)∝∣G(x,t)∣2p(x,t)\propto |G(x,t)|^2p(x,t)∝∣G(x,t)∣2 and in the associated free energy. In particular, its center ⟨x(t)⟩≡∑xx p(x,t)\langle x(t)\rangle\equiv\sum_x x\, p(x,t)⟨x(t)⟩≡∑x​xp(x,t) wanders on a length-scale O(t2/3)\mathcal{O}(t^{2/3})O(t2/3), while sample-to-sample fluctuations of −log⁡∑x∣G(x,t)∣2-\log\sum_x |G(x,t)|^2−log∑x​∣G(x,t)∣2 scale as t1/3t^{1/3}t1/3. At weak noise γ≪1γ\ll 1γ≪1, the crossover to the strong-disorder fixed point occurs at a parametrically long time O(γ−3/2)\mathcal{O}(γ^{-3/2})O(γ−3/2). These predictions are confirmed numerically using tensor-network simulations of the noisy operator dynamics in individual circuits at moderate noise, and of a phase-annealed proxy retaining hopping disorder at weak noise.
Symmetries strongly influence transport properties of quantum many-body systems and can lead to deviations from the generic case of diffusion. In this work, we study the impact of time-reversal symmetry breaking on the transport and its universal aspects in integrable chiral spin ladders. We observe that the infinite-temperature spin transport is superdiffusive with a dynamical critical exponent z = 3 / 2 matching the one of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class, which also lacks the time reversal symmetry. However, we find that fluctuations of the net magnetization transfer deviate from the KPZ predictions. Moreover, the full probability distribution of the associated spin current obeys fluctuation symmetry despite broken time-reversal and space-reflection symmetries. To further investigate the role of conserved quantities, we introduce an integrable quantum circuit that shares the essential symmetries with the chiral ladder and which exhibits analogous dynamical behavior in the absence of energy conservation. Our work shows that time-reversal symmetry breaking is compatible with superdiffusion but insufficient to stabilize the KPZ universality in integrable systems. This suggests that additional fundamental features are missing in order to identify the emergence of such dynamics in quantum matter.