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Fastest local entanglement scrambler, multistage thermalization, and a non-Hermitian phantom

Jaš Bensa, Marko Žnidarič

Published Mar 9, 2023• 29 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We study random quantum circuits and their rate of producing bipartite entanglement, specifically with respect to the choice of 2-qubit gates and the order (protocol) in which these are applied. The problem is mapped to a Markovian process, and we prove that there are large spectral equivalence classes—different configurations have the same spectrum. Optimal gates and the protocol that generate entanglement with the fastest theoretically possible rate are identified. Relaxation towards the asymptotic thermal entanglement proceeds via a series of phase transitions in the local relaxation rate, which is a consequence of non-Hermiticity. In particular, non-Hermiticity can cause the rate to be either faster or, even more interestingly, slower than predicted by the matrix eigenvalue gap. This result is caused by expansion coefficients that grow exponentially with system size, resulting in a “phantom” eigenvalue and is due to nonorthogonality of non-Hermitian eigenvectors. We numerically demonstrate that the phenomenon also occurs in random circuits with nonoptimal generic gates, random U(4) gates, and also without spatial or temporal randomness, suggesting that it could be of wide importance in other non-Hermitian settings, including correlations.

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Two-step relaxation in local many-body Floquet systems

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Abstract We want to understand how relaxation process from an initial non-generic state proceeds towards a long-time typical state reached under unitary quantum evolution. One would expect that after some initial correlation time relaxation will be a simple exponential decay with constant decay rate. We show that this is not necessarily the case. Studying various Floquet systems with fixed two-qubit gates, and focusing on purity and out-of-time-ordered correlation functions, we find that in many situations relaxation proceeds in two phases of exponential decay having different relaxation rates. Namely, in the thermodynamic limit the relaxation rate exhibits a change at a critical time proportional to system’s size. The initial thermodynamically relevant rate can be slower or faster than the asymptotic one, demonstrating that the recently discovered phantom relaxation, in which the decay is slower than predicted by a nonzero transfer matrix gap, is not limited to only random circuits.

arXiv:2301.06395•Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical•Sep 21, 2023•9 citations
We study random quantum circuits and their rate of producing bipartite entanglement, specifically with respect to the choice of 2-qubit gates and the order (protocol) in which these are applied. The problem is mapped to a Markovian process, and we prove that there are large spectral equivalence classes—different configurations have the same spectrum. Optimal gates and the protocol that generate entanglement with the fastest theoretically possible rate are identified. Relaxation towards the asymptotic thermal entanglement proceeds via a series of phase transitions in the local relaxation rate, which is a consequence of non-Hermiticity. In particular, non-Hermiticity can cause the rate to be either faster or, even more interestingly, slower than predicted by the matrix eigenvalue gap. This result is caused by expansion coefficients that grow exponentially with system size, resulting in a “phantom” eigenvalue and is due to nonorthogonality of non-Hermitian eigenvectors. We numerically demonstrate that the phenomenon also occurs in random circuits with nonoptimal generic gates, random U(4) gates, and also without spatial or temporal randomness, suggesting that it could be of wide importance in other non-Hermitian settings, including correlations.
We study random quantum circuits and their rate of producing bipartite entanglement, specifically with respect to the choice of 2-qubit gates and the order (protocol) in which these are applied.The problem is mapped to a Markovian process, and we prove that there are large spectral equivalence classes-different configurations have the same spectrum.Optimal gates and the protocol that generate entanglement with the fastest theoretically possible rate are identified.Relaxation towards the asymptotic thermal entanglement proceeds via a series of phase transitions in the local relaxation rate, which is a consequence of non-Hermiticity.In particular, non-Hermiticity can cause the rate to be either faster or, even more interestingly, slower than predicted by the matrix eigenvalue gap.This result is caused by expansion coefficients that grow exponentially with system size, resulting in a "phantom" eigenvalue and is due to nonorthogonality of non-Hermitian eigenvectors.We numerically demonstrate that the phenomenon also occurs in random circuits with nonoptimal generic gates, random U(4) gates, and also without spatial or temporal randomness, suggesting that it could be of wide importance in other non-Hermitian settings, including correlations.
We study the exponential relaxation of observables propagated with a non-Hermitian transfer matrix, an example being out-of-time-ordered correlations (OTOC) in brick-wall (BW) random quantum circuits. Until a time that scales as the system size, the exponential decay of observables is not usually determined by the second largest eigenvalue of the transfer matrix, as one can naively expect, but it is, in general, slower—this slower decay rate was dubbed “phantom eigenvalue.” Generally, this slower decay is given by the largest value in the pseudospectrum of the transfer matrix; however, we show that the decay rate can be an arbitrary value between the second largest eigenvalue and the largest value in the pseudospectrum. This arbitrary decay can be observed, for example, in the propagation of OTOC in periodic boundary conditions BW circuits. To explore this phenomenon, we study a matrix iteration made from a simple tridiagonal Toeplitz matrix. This setting can be used to propagate OTOC in random circuits with open boundary conditions and to describe a one-dimensional biased random walk with dissipation at the edges. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We numerically study protocols consisting of repeated applications of two qubit gates used for generating random pure states. A necessary number of steps needed in order to generate states displaying bipartite entanglement typical of random states is considered. Numerics indicates that for a generic two qubit entangling gate the decay of purity is exponential with the decay time scaling as $\ensuremath{\sim}n$, implying that of order $\ensuremath{\sim}{n}^{2}$ steps are needed to reach random bipartite entanglement. We also numerically identify the optimal two qubit gate for which the convergence is the fastest. Perhaps surprisingly, applying the same good two qubit gate in addition to a random single qubit rotations at each step leads to a faster generation of entanglement than applying a random two qubit transformation at each step.
We study out-of-time-ordered correlation (OTOC) functions in various random quantum circuits and show that the average dynamics is governed by a Markovian propagator. This is then used to study relaxation of OTOC to its long-time average value in circuits with random single-qubit unitaries, finding that relaxation in general proceeds in two steps: In the first phase that lasts upto an extensively long time the relaxation rate is given by a phantom eigenvalue of a nonsymmetric propagator, whereas in the second phase the rate is determined by the true 2nd largest propagator eigenvalue. We also obtain exact OTOC dynamics on the lightcone and an expression for the average OTOC in finite random circuits with random two-qubit gates.
Phantom relaxation is relaxation with a rate that is not given by a finite spectral gap. Studying the average purity dynamics in a staircase random Haar circuit and the spectral decomposition of a nonsymmetric matrix describing the underlying Markovian evolution, we explain how that can arise out of an ordinary-looking spectrum. Crucial are alternating expansion coefficients that diverge in the thermodynamic limit due to the non-Hermitian skin effect in the matrix describing the average purity dynamics under an overall unitary evolution. The mysterious phantom relaxation emerges out of localized generalized eigenvectors describing the Jordan normal form kernel, and, independently, also out of interesting trigonometric sums due to localized true eigenvectors. All this shows that when dealing with non-Hermitian matrices it can happen that the spectrum is not the relevant object; rather, it is the pseudospectrum or, equivalently, a delicate cancellation enabled by localized eigenvectors.
Abstract We want to understand how relaxation process from an initial non-generic state proceeds towards a long-time typical state reached under unitary quantum evolution. One would expect that after some initial correlation time relaxation will be a simple exponential decay with constant decay rate. We show that this is not necessarily the case. Studying various Floquet systems with fixed two-qubit gates, and focusing on purity and out-of-time-ordered correlation functions, we find that in many situations relaxation proceeds in two phases of exponential decay having different relaxation rates. Namely, in the thermodynamic limit the relaxation rate exhibits a change at a critical time proportional to system’s size. The initial thermodynamically relevant rate can be slower or faster than the asymptotic one, demonstrating that the recently discovered phantom relaxation, in which the decay is slower than predicted by a nonzero transfer matrix gap, is not limited to only random circuits.