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Emergent Randomness and Benchmarking from Many-Body Quantum Chaos

Joonhee Choi, Adam L. Shaw, Ivaylo S. Madjarov, Xin Xie, Jacob P. Covey, Jordan S. Cotler, Daniel K. Mark, Hsin-Yuan Huang, Anant Kale, Hannes Pichler, Fernando G. S. L. Brandão, Soonwon Choi, Manuel Endres

Published Mar 5, 2021• 6 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Chaotic quantum many-body dynamics typically lead to relaxation of local observables. In this process, known as quantum thermalization, a subregion reaches a thermal state due to quantum correlations with the remainder of the system, which acts as an intrinsic bath. While the bath is generally assumed to be unobserved, modern quantum science experiments have the ability to track both subsystem and bath at a microscopic level. Here, by utilizing this ability, we discover that measurement results associated with small subsystems exhibit universal random statistics following chaotic quantum many-body dynamics, a phenomenon beyond the standard paradigm of quantum thermalization. We explain these observations with an ensemble of pure states, defined via correlations with the bath, that dynamically acquires a close to random distribution. Such random ensembles play an important role in quantum information science, associated with quantum supremacy tests and device verification, but typically require highly-engineered, time-dependent control for their preparation. In contrast, our approach uncovers random ensembles naturally emerging from evolution with a time-independent Hamiltonian. As an application of this emergent randomness, we develop a benchmarking protocol which estimates the many-body fidelity during generic chaotic evolution and demonstrate it using our Rydberg quantum simulator. Our work has wide ranging implications for the understanding of quantum many-body chaos and thermalization in terms of emergent randomness and at the same time paves the way for applications of this concept in a much wider context.

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Chaotic quantum many-body dynamics typically lead to relaxation of local observables. In this process, known as quantum thermalization, a subregion reaches a thermal state due to quantum correlations with the remainder of the system, which acts as an intrinsic bath. While the bath is generally assumed to be unobserved, modern quantum science experiments have the ability to track both subsystem and bath at a microscopic level. Here, by utilizing this ability, we discover that measurement results associated with small subsystems exhibit universal random statistics following chaotic quantum many-body dynamics, a phenomenon beyond the standard paradigm of quantum thermalization. We explain these observations with an ensemble of pure states, defined via correlations with the bath, that dynamically acquires a close to random distribution. Such random ensembles play an important role in quantum information science, associated with quantum supremacy tests and device verification, but typically require highly-engineered, time-dependent control for their preparation. In contrast, our approach uncovers random ensembles naturally emerging from evolution with a time-independent Hamiltonian. As an application of this emergent randomness, we develop a benchmarking protocol which estimates the many-body fidelity during generic chaotic evolution and demonstrate it using our Rydberg quantum simulator. Our work has wide ranging implications for the understanding of quantum many-body chaos and thermalization in terms of emergent randomness and at the same time paves the way for applications of this concept in a much wider context.
We present exact results on a novel kind of emergent random matrix universality that quantum many-body systems at infinite temperature can exhibit. Specifically, we consider an ensemble of pure states supported on a small subsystem, generated from projective measurements of the remainder of the system in a local basis. We rigorously show that the ensemble, derived for a class of quantum chaotic systems undergoing quench dynamics, approaches a universal form completely independent of system details: it becomes uniformly distributed in Hilbert space. This goes beyond the standard paradigm of quantum thermalization, which dictates that the subsystem relaxes to an ensemble of quantum states that reproduces the expectation values of local observables in a thermal mixed state. Our results imply more generally that the distribution of quantum states themselves becomes indistinguishable from those of uniformly random ones, i.e. the ensemble forms a quantum state-design in the parlance of quantum information theory. Our work establishes bridges between quantum many-body physics, quantum information and random matrix theory, by showing that pseudo-random states can arise from isolated quantum dynamics, opening up new ways to design applications for quantum state tomography and benchmarking.
We present exact results on a novel kind of emergent random matrix universality that quantum many-body systems at infinite temperature can exhibit. Specifically, we consider an ensemble of pure states supported on a small subsystem, generated from projective measurements of the remainder of the system in a local basis. We rigorously show that the ensemble, derived for a class of quantum chaotic systems undergoing quench dynamics, approaches a universal form completely independent of system details: it becomes uniformly distributed in Hilbert space. This goes beyond the standard paradigm of quantum thermalization, which dictates that the subsystem relaxes to an ensemble of quantum states that reproduces the expectation values of local observables in a thermal mixed state. Our results imply more generally that the distribution of quantum states themselves becomes indistinguishable from those of uniformly random ones, i.e., the ensemble forms a quantum state design in the parlance of quantum information theory. Our work establishes bridges between quantum many-body physics, quantum information and random matrix theory, by showing that pseudorandom states can arise from isolated quantum dynamics, opening up new ways to design applications for quantum state tomography and benchmarking.
Recent studies of "deep thermalization" have revealed universal physics in quantum many-body dynamics beyond equilibration towards Gibbs states: maximally random quantum state ensembles can emerge on local subsystems, generated by measurements on their complement. In this work, we further identify a new form of universality exhibited in the "finer fingerprints" of quantum dynamics for local subsystems, induced by global unitary time-evolution. Specifically, we consider the projected Kraus ensemble, an ensemble of Kraus operators obtained by unraveling the quantum channel on a small subsystem with respect to knowledge of the classical configurations of its complement. Our central result is a one-parameter random matrix Ansatz that captures the ensemble's emergent statistical behavior along particular spacetime scalings, valid for generic 1D circuit dynamics without conservation laws: the ensemble is described by the product of a complex Ginibre random matrix and an independent log-normal random real scalar. The former encodes scrambling within the subsystem, captured by rotational invariance of the Ginibre measure, whereas the latter encodes fluctuations in the Born probabilities, arising from locality of the underlying dynamics. Our Ansatz can be established in the special cases of dynamics generated by global Haar random unitaries and dual-unitary circuits, while we motivate it for generic circuits using arguments of spacetime duality and the multiplicative ergodic theorem on long products of spatial transfer matrices. Extensive numerical simulations for random and Floquet circuit models verify these predictions. This universality in Kraus operators also provides a microscopic mechanism for deep thermalization in generic 1D quantum circuit dynamics, and has implications for local quantum information recoverability involving classical side information tied to knowledge of the bath.
Quantum many-body systems provide a unique platform for exploring the rich interplay between chaos, randomness, and complexity. In a recently proposed paradigm known as deep thermalization, random quantum states of system A are generated by performing projective measurements on system B following chaotic Hamiltonian evolution acting jointly on AB. In this scheme, the randomness of the projected state ensemble arises from the intrinsic randomness of the outcomes when B is measured. Here, we propose a modified scheme in which classical randomness injected during the protocol is converted by quantum chaos into quantum randomness of the resulting state ensemble. We show that for generic chaotic systems this conversion is optimal in that each bit of injected classical entropy generates as much additional quantum randomness as adding an extra qubit to B. This significantly enhances the randomness of the projected ensemble without imposing additional demands on the quantum hardware. Our scheme can be easily implemented on typical analog quantum simulators, providing a more scalable route for generating quantum randomness valuable for many applications. In particular, we demonstrate that the accuracy of a shadow tomography protocol can be substantially improved.
Can measuring part of a quantum system make the remainder more random than the whole? Deep thermalization is a phenomenon in which measurement on part of a thermalizing quantum many-body system produces a subsystem ensemble of states whose higher moments approximate those of Haar-random states, i.e. a quantum state design. In this work, we tightly limit how much randomness from the global state can be transferred to the subsystem in this way: without further assumptions, a global k-design degrades to at most a k/2-design on the unmeasured subsystem. We show this optimality bound by constructing a global k-design for which each sampled state hides a sign preference in its projected distribution that can always be discovered by analyzing moments of its projected ensemble greater than k/2. Strikingly, we show this design loss can be reversed when the global design is generated by chaotic dynamics. Under the chaotic constant-time evolution of a Gaussian Unitary Ensemble (GUE) Hamiltonian, we find that the projected ensemble becomes exactly Haar-random in the thermodynamic limit --- even if the global state seems to be only a O(1)\mathcal{O}(1)O(1)-design. Moreover, we show this phenomenon does not require the full GUE structure: it persists under substantially weaker assumptions on the spectrum and eigenbasis, and admits finite-size versions with increasingly accurate projected designs as the measured subsystem grows. Our results identify global chaotic dynamics as a mechanism by which measurements can ``concentrate'' quantum randomness and place tight limits on when such amplification is possible.
The emergence of statistical mechanics from quantum dynamics is conventionally understood through quantum chaos, the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH), and canonical typicality, which together explain the thermal behavior of local observables in quantum many-body systems. We provide a distinct mechanism in which, for a quantum many-body system under strong random perturbation, the chaotic behavior of the system's eigenvectors and a constraint on the total energy directly generate a canonical ensemble for the entire system. The canonical ensemble occurs as the first moment of the Porter-Thomas distribution of the system's chaotic eigenstates, and the constraint on the total energy sets the temperature in the ensemble. This yields canonically distributed expectation values without invoking ETH, a microcanonical ensemble, or a subsystem-bath partition for local and global observables. We numerically demonstrate the mechanism for the 1D transverse-field Ising model by showing canonically distributed eigenstate projectors and spin-spin correlators with distinctive temperature dependence of the correlation length. An implementation of this thermalization approach on a quantum computer can be utilized for thermal state preparation.