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arXiv:2610.36048

Typicality of entanglement growth and transport fluctuations in quantum symmetric exclusion processes

Ewan McCulloch

cond-mat.stat-mechcond-mat.dis-nncond-mat.mes-hallquant-phSubmitted Oct 26, 2026• Announced Oct 28, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We use macroscopic fluctuation theory (MFT) to establish the typicality of charge-transfer statistics and entanglement dynamics in the quantum symmetric exclusion process, a model of stochastically hopping free fermions with diffusive transport and long-range quantum coherence. We show that the leading long-time charge-transfer full counting statistics of individual noise realizations coincide almost surely with those of the classical symmetric exclusion process (SSEP), in equilibrium and following quenches from arbitrary occupation-diagonal product states. Our results apply to transient fluctuations in the thermodynamic limit, extending previous work that has primarily focused on stationary regimes. Our approach compares the noise averages of the charge-transfer generating function and its inverse. The former reduces to SSEP, while the latter maps to an auxiliary Brownian energy process whose MFT saddle-point problem is related to that of SSEP, yielding matching large-deviation exponents. Through free-fermion identities relating entanglement to subsystem-number fluctuations, this establishes the self-averaging of the covariance-matrix eigenvalue distribution and of Rényi and von Neumann entropies. We obtain asymptotically exact predictions for entanglement growth from domain-wall and Néel initial states, in excellent agreement with numerical simulations.

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8 pages, 2 figures, 8 pages Supplemental Material

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We use macroscopic fluctuation theory (MFT) to establish the typicality of charge-transfer statistics and entanglement dynamics in the quantum symmetric exclusion process, a model of stochastically hopping free fermions with diffusive transport and long-range quantum coherence. We show that the leading long-time charge-transfer full counting statistics of individual noise realizations coincide almost surely with those of the classical symmetric exclusion process (SSEP), in equilibrium and following quenches from arbitrary occupation-diagonal product states. Our results apply to transient fluctuations in the thermodynamic limit, extending previous work that has primarily focused on stationary regimes. Our approach compares the noise averages of the charge-transfer generating function and its inverse. The former reduces to SSEP, while the latter maps to an auxiliary Brownian energy process whose MFT saddle-point problem is related to that of SSEP, yielding matching large-deviation exponents. Through free-fermion identities relating entanglement to subsystem-number fluctuations, this establishes the self-averaging of the covariance-matrix eigenvalue distribution and of Rényi and von Neumann entropies. We obtain asymptotically exact predictions for entanglement growth from domain-wall and Néel initial states, in excellent agreement with numerical simulations.
We study the fluctuation statistics of integrated currents in noisy quantum diffusive systems, focusing on the Quantum Symmetric Simple Exclusion and Inclusion Processes (QSSEP/QSSIP). These one-dimensional fermionic (QSSEP) and bosonic (QSSIP) models feature stochastic nearest-neighbor hopping driven by Brownian noise, together with boundary injection and removal processes. They provide solvable microscopic settings in which quantum coherence coexists with diffusion. Upon noise averaging, their dynamics reduce to those of the classical SSEP/SSIP. We show that the cumulant-generating function of the integrated current, at large scales, obeys a large deviation principle. To leading order in system size and for each noise realization, it converges to that of the corresponding classical process, establishing a classical typicality of current fluctuations in these noisy quantum systems. We further demonstrate a direct connection with Macroscopic Fluctuation Theory (MFT), showing that the large-scale equations satisfied by biased quantum densities coincide with the steady-state Hamilton equations of MFT, thereby providing a microscopic quantum justification of the MFT framework in these models. Finally, we identify the leading finite-size corrections to the current statistics. We show the existence of subleading contributions of purely quantum origin, which are absent in the corresponding classical setting, and provide their explicit expressions for the second and third current cumulants. These quantum corrections are amenable to direct experimental or numerical verification, provided sufficient control over the noise realizations can be achieved. Their presence points toward the necessity of a quantum extension of MFT.
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Abstract We study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of entanglement fluctuations in the ν = 1 quantum symmetric simple exclusion process, a free-fermion chain with hopping amplitudes that are stochastic in time but homogeneous in space. Previous work showed that the average entanglement growth after a quantum quench can be explained in terms of pairs of entangled quasiparticles performing random walks, leading to diffusive entanglement spreading. By incorporating the noise-induced statistical correlations between the quasiparticles, we extend this description to the full-time probability distribution of the entanglement entropy. Our generalized quasiparticle picture allows us to compute the average time evolution of a generic function of the reduced density matrix of a subsystem. We also apply our result to the entanglement asymmetry. This allows us to investigate the restoration of particle-number symmetry in the dynamics from initial states with no well-defined particle number. Regarding the possible existence of the quantum Mpemba effect, our analysis indicates that its occurrence is an extremely fine-tuned phenomenon, requiring very specific conditions and therefore being rather difficult to observe in practice.
We introduce and solve the Interacting Quantum Symmetric Exclusion Process (IQSEP), a family of models describing the stochastic quantum hopping of charged particles along the edges of a lattice, with hopping amplitudes that depend on the occupations of neighbouring sites. In the absence of interactions, they reduce to the standard quantum simple symmetric exclusion process, exhibiting coherent diffusive transport. For interactions of order one, they capture incoherent diffusive transport and its fluctuations, characterized by density-dependent diffusivity and mobility, making contact with the macroscopic fluctuation theory. By rescaling the interaction strength appropriately with the lattice mesh, we define a mesoscopic scaling regime that retains a finite coherence length in the continuous thermodynamic limit. This regime interpolates between coherent behavior at small length scales and incoherent behavior at large scales. The resulting scaling theory accounts for fluctuations of quantum coherences in interacting diffusive systems, going beyond the scope of standard fluctuating hydrodynamics.