Information scrambling and the correspondence of entanglement dynamics and operator dynamics in systems with nonlocal interactions

Abstract

How fast quantum information scrambles such that it becomes inaccessible by local probes turns out to be central to various fields. Motivated by recent works on spin systems with nonlocal interactions, we study information scrambling in different variants of the Ising model. Our work reveals that nonlocal interactions can induce operator dynamics not precisely captured by out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs). In particular, the operator size exhibits a slowdown in systems with generic power-law interactions despite a highly nonlinear light cone. A recently proposed microscopic model for fast scrambling does not show this slowdown, which uncovers a distinct analogy between a local operator under unitary evolution and the entanglement entropy following a quantum quench. Our work gives new insights on scrambling properties of systems in reach of current quantum simulation platforms and complements results on possibly observing features of quantum gravity in the laboratory.