We introduce “quantum ergodic/mixing channel” that drives a quantum system from any initial states to a certain target state. By making use of mathematical theorems on ergodicity and mixing, we construct schemes for generating entanglement.
The development of classical ergodic theory has had a significant impact on the areas of mathematics, physics, and, in general, applied sciences. The quantum ergodic theory of Hamiltonian dynamics has its motivations in understanding thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. The quantum channel, a completely positive trace-preserving map, represents the most general representation of quantum dynamics and is an essential aspect of quantum information theory and quantum computation. In this work, we study the ergodic theory of quantum channels by characterizing different levels of ergodic hierarchy from integrable to mixing. The quantum channels on single systems are constructed from the unitary operators acting on bipartite states and tracing out the environment. The interaction strength of these unitary operators measured in terms of operator entanglement provides sufficient conditions for the channel to be mixing. By using block-diagonal unitary operators, we construct a set of nonergodic channels. By using the canonical form of the two-qubit unitary operator, we analytically construct channels on a single qubit ranging from integrable to mixing. Moreover, we also study interacting many-body quantum systems that include the famous Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and show that they display mixing within the framework of the quantum channel.
We study discrete-time quantum trajectories of a finite-dimensional system in a disordered environment, where the instrument applied at each step is determined by an invertible measure-preserving dynamical system. For general quantum instruments on a standard Borel outcome space, we construct the quenched probability law on sequences of measurement outcomes for a fixed realization of the disorder and a given initial state. Under a quenched Doeblin condition with a uniform deterministic minorization constant and an environment-dependent minorizing probability measure, we establish the existence and uniqueness of an equivariant family of random posterior laws and identify its barycenter as the unique dynamically stationary state for the associated non-selective channel cocycle. If the environment is ergodic, we prove a pathwise ergodic theorem valid for every measurable choice of initial state: for almost every realization of the disorder, time averages of posterior states converge almost surely under the corresponding quenched law to the disorder average of the unique dynamically stationary state. For an ergodic environment, we establish quenched variance asymptotics and, when the asymptotic variance is positive, a central limit theorem and standardized Berry--Esseen bounds for additive functionals generated by bounded measurable real-valued functions of the environment and posterior state. These results hold for every measurable initial state and almost every disorder realization. We then show that the stationary annealed joint process of instruments and posterior states inherits the α-mixing of the instrument process, up to an exponentially decaying term. Finally, we provide classes of examples involving perfect and imperfect measurements, including models with continuous or finite outcome spaces, that satisfy the standing Doeblin condition.
We introduce the concept of ergodicity and explore its deviation caused by quantum scars in an isolated quantum system, employing a pedagogical approach based on a toy model. Quantum scars, originally identified as traces of classically unstable orbits in certain wavefunctions of chaotic systems, have recently regained interest for their role in non-ergodic dynamics, as they retain memory of their initial states. We elucidate these features of quantum scars within the same framework of this toy model. The integrable part of the model consists of two large spins, with a classical counterpart, which we combine with a random matrix to induce ergodic behavior. Scarred states can be selectively generated from the integrable spin Hamiltonian by protecting them from the ergodic states using a projector method. Deformed projectors mimic the ‘quantum leakage’ of scarred states, enabling tunable mixing with ergodic states and thereby controlling the degree of scarring. In this simple model, we investigate various properties of quantum scarring and shed light on different aspects of many-body quantum scars observed in more complex quantum systems. Notably, the underlying classicality can be revealed through the entanglement spectrum and the dynamics of ‘out-of-time-ordered correlators’.