Quantum Circuits with Classically Simulable Operator Scrambling.

Abstract

We introduce a new family of quantum circuits for which the scrambling of a subspace of nonlocal operators is classically simulable. We call these circuits "super-Clifford circuits" since the Heisenberg time evolution of these operators corresponds to Clifford evolution in operator space. Thus we are able to classically simulate the time evolution of certain single Pauli strings into operators with operator entanglement that grows linearly with the number of qubits. These circuits provide a new technique for studying scrambling in systems with a large number of qubits, and are an explicit counter example to the intuition that classical simulability implies the absence of scrambling.