Out-of-time-order Correlators Research Articles

Quantum information scrambling and chemical reactions

The ultimate regularity of quantum mechanics creates a tension with the assumption of classical chaos used in many of our pictures of chemical reaction dynamics. Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) provide a quantum analog to the Lyapunov exponents that characterize classical chaotic motion. Maldacena, Shenker, and Stanford have suggested a fundamental quantum bound for the rate of information scrambling, which resembles a limit suggested by Herzfeld for chemical reaction rates. Here, we use OTOCs to study model reactions based on a double-well reaction coordinate coupled to anharmonic oscillators or to a continuum oscillator bath. Upon cooling, as one enters the tunneling regime where the reaction rate does not strongly depend on temperature, the quantum Lyapunov exponent can approach the scrambling bound and the effective reaction rate obtained from a population correlation function can approach the Herzfeld limit on reaction rates: Tunneling increases scrambling by expanding the state space available to the system. The coupling of a dissipative continuum bath to the reaction coordinate reduces the scrambling rate obtained from the early-time OTOC, thus making the scrambling bound harder to reach, in the same way that friction is known to lower the temperature at which thermally activated barrier crossing goes over to the low-temperature activationless tunneling regime. Thus, chemical reactions entering the tunneling regime can be information scramblers as powerful as the black holes to which the quantum Lyapunov exponent bound has usually been applied.

Probing dynamical sensitivity of a non-Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser system through out-of-time-order correlators.

Non-Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser (KAM) systems, when perturbed by weak time-dependent fields, offer a fast route to classical chaos through an abrupt breaking of invariant phase-space tori. In this work, we employ out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) to study the dynamical sensitivity of a perturbed non-KAM system in the quantum limit as the parameter that characterizes the resonance condition is slowly varied. For this purpose, we consider a quantized kicked harmonic oscillator (KHO) model, which displays stochastic webs resembling Arnold's diffusion that facilitate large-scale diffusion in the phase space. Although the Lyapunov exponent of the KHO at resonances remains close to zero in the weak perturbative regime, making the system weakly chaotic in the conventional sense, the classical phase space undergoes significant structural changes. Motivated by this, we study the OTOCs when the system is in resonance and contrast the results with the nonresonant case. At resonances, we observe that the long-time dynamics of the OTOCs are sensitive to these structural changes, where they grow quadratically as opposed to linear or stagnant growth at nonresonances. On the other hand, our findings suggest that the short-time dynamics remain relatively more stable and show the exponential growth found in the literature for unstable fixed points. The numerical results are backed by analytical expressions derived for a few special cases. We will then extend our findings concerning the nonresonant cases to a broad class of near-integrable KAM systems.

Out-of-time-order correlators and Lyapunov exponents in sparse SYK

We use a combination of analytical and numerical methods to study out-of-time order correlators (OTOCs) in the sparse Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. We find that at a given order of N, the standard result for the q-local, all-to-all SYK, obtained through the sum over ladder diagrams, is corrected by a series in the sparsity parameter, k. We present an algorithm to sum the diagrams at any given order of 1/(kq)n. We also study OTOCs numerically as a function of the sparsity parameter and determine the Lyapunov exponent. We find that numerical stability when extracting the Lyapunov exponent requires averaging over a massive number of realizations. This trade-off between the efficiency of the sparse model and consistent behavior at finite N becomes more significant for larger values of N.

Dynamical transition from localized to uniform scrambling in locally hyperbolic systems.

Fast scrambling of quantum correlations, reflected by the exponential growth of out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) on short pre-Ehrenfest time scales, is commonly considered as a major quantum signature of unstable dynamics in quantum systems with a classical limit. In two recent works [Phys.Rev. Lett. 123, 160401 (2019)0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.123.160401] and [Phys. Rev.Lett. 124, 140602 (2020)10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.140602], a significant difference in the scrambling rate of integrable (many-body) systems was observed, depending on the initial state being semiclassically localized around unstable fixed points or fully delocalized (infinite temperature). Specifically, the quantum Lyapunov exponent λ_{q} quantifying the OTOC growth is given, respectively, by λ_{q}=2λ_{s} or λ_{q}=λ_{s} in terms of the stability exponent λ_{s} of the hyperbolic fixed point. Here we show that a wave packet, initially localized around this fixed point, features a distinct dynamical transition between these two regions. We present an analytical semiclassical approach providing a physical picture of this phenomenon, and support our findings by extensive numerical simulations in the whole parameter range of locally unstable dynamics of a Bose-Hubbard dimer. Our results suggest that the existence of this crossover is a hallmark of unstable separatrix dynamics in integrable systems, thus opening the possibility to distinguish the latter, on the basis of this particular observable, from genuine chaotic dynamics generally featuring uniform exponential growth of the OTOC.

Scaling laws of the out-of-time-order correlators at the transition to the spontaneous PT -symmetry breaking in a Floquet system

We investigate both numerically and analytically the dynamics of out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) in a non-Hermitian kicked rotor model, addressing the scaling laws of the time dependence of OTOCs at the transition to the spontaneous $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry breaking. In the unbroken phase of $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry, the OTOCs increase monotonically and eventually saturate with time, demonstrating the freezing of information scrambling. Just beyond the phase transition points, the OTOCs increase in the power laws of time, with the exponent being larger than 2. Interestingly, the quadratic growth of OTOCs with time emerges when the system is far beyond the phase transition points. The above numerical findings are validated by our theoretical analysis, which provides a general framework with important implications for Floquet engineering and information scrambling in chaotic systems.

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

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.

Probing Operator Spreading via Floquet Engineering in a Superconducting Circuit.

Operator spreading, often characterized by out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs), is one of the central concepts in quantum many-body physics. However, measuring OTOCs is experimentally challenging due to the requirement of reversing the time evolution of systems. Here we apply Floquet engineering to investigate operator spreading in a superconducting 10-qubit chain. Floquet engineering provides an effective way to tune the coupling strength between nearby qubits, which is used to demonstrate quantum walks with tunable couplings, reversed time evolution, and the measurement of OTOCs. A clear light-cone-like operator propagation is observed in the system with multiple excitations, and has a nearly equal velocity as the single-particle quantum walk. For the butterfly operator that is nonlocal (local) under the Jordan-Wigner transformation, the OTOCs show distinct behaviors with (without) a signature of information scrambling in the near integrable system.

Quantum statistical mechanics of encryption: Reaching the speed limit of classical block ciphers

We cast encryption via classical block ciphers in terms of operator spreading in a dual space of Pauli strings, a formulation which allows us to characterize classical ciphers by using tools well known in the analysis of quantum many-body systems. We connect plaintext and ciphertext attacks to out-of-time order correlators (OTOCs) and quantify the quality of ciphers using measures of delocalization in string space such as participation ratios and corresponding entropies obtained from the wave function amplitudes in string space. In particular, we show that in Feistel ciphers the entropy saturates its bound to exponential precision for ciphers with 4 or more rounds, consistent with the classic Luby–Rackoff result that it takes these many rounds to generate strong pseudorandom permutations. The saturation of the string-space information entropy and the vanishing of the OTOCs to exponential precision are taken as necessary conditions for the security of the cipher — we conjecture these criteria are also sufficient, as physically they signal irreversibility and chaos. We argue that the conditions on both OTOCs and string entropies can be satisfied by n-bit block ciphers implemented via random reversible circuits with O(nlogn) gates. This paper focuses on a tree-structured cipher composed of layers of n/3 3-bit gates, for which a “key” specifies uniquely the sequence of gates that comprise the circuit. We show that in order to reach this “speed limit” one must employ a three-stage circuit consisting of a nonlinear stage implemented by layers of nonlinear gates that proliferate the number of strings, flanked by two linear stages, each deploying layers of a special set of linear “inflationary” gates that accelerate the growth of small individual strings. The close formal correspondence to quantum scramblers established in this work leads us to suggest that this three-stage construction is also required in order to scramble quantum states to similar precision and with circuits of similar size. A shallow, O(logn)-depth cipher of the type described here can be used in constructing a polynomial-overhead scheme for computation on encrypted data proposed in another publication as an alternative to Homomorphic Encryption.

Out-of-Time-Order correlators in driven conformal field theories

We compute Out-of-Time-Order correlators (OTOCs) for conformal field theories (CFTs) subjected to either continuous or discrete periodic drive protocols. This is achieved by an appropriate analytic continuation of the stroboscopic time. After detailing the general structure, we perform explicit calculations in large-c CFTs where we find that OTOCs display an exponential, an oscillatory and a power-law behaviour in the heating phase, the non-heating phase and on the phase boundary, respectively. In contrast to this, for the Ising CFT representing an integrable model, OTOCs never display such exponential growth. This observation hints towards how OTOCs can demarcate between integrable and chaotic CFT models subjected to a periodic drive. We further explore properties of the light-cone which is characterized by the corresponding butterfly velocity as well as the Lyapunov exponent. Interestingly, as a consequence of the spatial inhomogeneity introduced by the drive, the butterfly velocity, in these systems, has an explicit dependence on the initial location of the operators. We chart out the dependence of the Lyapunov exponent and the butterfly velocities on the frequency and amplitude of the drive for both protocols and discuss the fixed point structure which differentiates such driven CFTs from their undriven counterparts.

Quantum chaos in supersymmetric quantum mechanics: An exact diagonalization study

We use exact diagonalization to study energy level statistics and out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) for the simplest supersymmetric extension $\hat{H}_S = \hat{H}_B \otimes I + \hat{x}_1 \otimes \sigma_1 + \hat{x}_2 \otimes \sigma_3$ of the bosonic Hamiltonian $\hat{H}_B = \hat{p}_1^2 + \hat{p}_2^2 + \hat{x}_1^2 \, \hat{x}_2^2$. For a long time, this bosonic Hamiltonian was considered one of the simplest systems which exhibit dynamical chaos both classically and quantum-mechanically. Its structure closely resembles that of spatially compactified pure Yang-Mills theory. Correspondingly, the structure of our supersymmetric Hamiltonian is similar to that of spatially compactified supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, also known as the BFSS model. We present numerical evidence that a continuous energy spectrum of the supersymmetric model leads to monotonous growth of OTOCs down to the lowest temperatures, which is also expected for the BFSS model from holographic duality. This growth is saturated by low-energy eigenstates with effectively one-dimensional wave functions and a completely non-chaotic energy level distribution. We observe a sharp boundary separating these low-energy states from the bulk of chaotic high-energy states. Our data suggests, although with a limited confidence, that at low temperatures the OTOC growth might be exponential over a finite range of time, with the corresponding Lyapunov exponent scaling linearly with temperature. In contrast, the gapped low-energy spectrum of the bosonic Hamiltonian leads to oscillating OTOCs at low temperatures without any signatures of exponential growth. We also find that the OTOCs for the bosonic Hamiltonian are never sufficiently close to the classical Lyapunov distance. On the other hand, the OTOCs for the supersymmetric system agree with the classical limit reasonably well over a finite range of temperatures and evolution times.

Critical quenches, OTOCs and early-time chaos

In this article, we explore dynamical aspects of Out-of-Time-Order correlators (OTOCs) for critical quenches, in which an initial non-trivial state evolves with a CFT-Hamiltonian. At sufficiently large time, global critical quenches exhibit a universal thermal-behavior in terms of low-point correlators. We demonstrate that, under such a quench, OTOCs demarcate chaotic CFTs from integrable CFTs by exhibiting a characteristic exponential Lyapunov growth for the former. Upon perturbatively introducing inhomogeneity to the global quench, we further argue and demonstrate with examples that, such a perturbation parameter can induce a parametrically large scrambling time, even for a CFT with an order one central charge. This feature may be relevant in designing measurement protocols for non-trivial OTOCs, in general. Both our global and inhomogeneous quench results bode well for an upper bound on the corresponding Lyapunov exponent, that may hold outside thermal equilibrium.

Out-of-time-order correlators of nonlocal block-spin and random observables in integrable and nonintegrable spin chains

Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOC) in the Ising Floquet system, that can be both integrable and nonintegrable is studied. Instead of localized spin observables, we study contiguous symmetric blocks of spins or random operators localized on these blocks as observables. We find only power-law growth of OTOC in both integrable and nonintegrable regimes. In the non-integrable regime, beyond the scrambling time, there is an exponential saturation of the OTOC to values consistent with random matrix theory. This motivates the use of "pre-scrambled" random block operators as observables. A pure exponential saturation of OTOC in both integrable and nonintegrable system is observed, without a scrambling phase. Averaging over random observables from the Gaussian unitary ensemble, the OTOC is found to be exactly same as the operator entanglement entropy, whose exponential saturation has been observed in previous studies of such spin-chains.

Subleading bounds on chaos

Chaos, in quantum systems, can be diagnosed by certain out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) that obey the chaos bound of Maldacena, Shenker, and Stanford (MSS). We begin by deriving a dispersion relation for this class of OTOCs, implying that they must satisfy many more constraints beyond the MSS bound. Motivated by this observation, we perform a systematic analysis obtaining an infinite set of constraints on the OTOC. This infinite set includes the MSS bound as the leading constraint. In addition, it also contains subleading bounds that are highly constraining, especially when the MSS bound is saturated by the leading term. These new bounds, among other things, imply that the MSS bound cannot be exactly saturated over any duration of time, however short. Furthermore, we derive a sharp bound on the Lyapunov exponent λ2 ≤ frac{6pi }{beta } of the subleading correction to maximal chaos.

Quantum information scrambling in molecules

Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) can be used to probe how quickly a quantum system scrambles information when the initial conditions of the dynamics are changed. In sufficiently large quantum systems, one can extract from the OTOC the quantum analog of the Lyapunov coefficient that describes the time scale on which a classical chaotic system becomes scrambled. OTOCs have been applied only to a very limited number of toy models, such as the SYK model connected with black hole information scrambling, but they could find much wider applicability for information scrambling in quantum systems that allow comparison with experiments. The vibrations of polyatomic molecules are known to undergo a transition from regular dynamics at low energy to facile energy flow at sufficiently high energy. Molecules therefore represent ideal quantum systems to study scrambling in many-body systems of moderate size (here 6 to 36 degrees of freedom). By computing quantum OTOCs and their classical counterparts we quantify how information becomes 'scrambled' quantum mechanically in molecular systems. Between early 'ballistic' dynamics, and late 'saturation' of the OTOC when the full density of states is explored, there is indeed a regime where a quantum Lyapunov coefficient can be defined for all molecules in this study. Comparison with experimental rate data shows that slow scrambling as measured by the OTOC can reach the time scale of molecular reaction dynamics. Even for the smallest molecules we discuss, the Maldacena bound remains satisfied by regularized OTOCs, but not by unregularized OTOCs, highlighting that the former are more useful for discussing information scrambling in this type of moderate-size quantum system.

Out-of-time-order correlations and Floquet dynamical quantum phase transition

Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) progressively play an important role in different fields of physics, particularly in the non-equilibrium quantum many-body systems. In this paper, we show that OTOCs can be used to prob the Floquet dynamical quantum phase transitions (FDQPTs). We investigate the OTOCs of two exactly solvable Floquet spin models, namely: Floquet XY chain and synchronized Floquet XY model. We show that the border of driven frequency range, over which the Floquet XY model shows FDQPT, signals by the global minimum of the infinite-temperature time averaged OTOC. Moreover, our results manifest that OTOCs decay algebraically in the long time, for which the decay exponent in the FDQPT region is different from that of in the region where the system does not show FDQPTs. In addition, for the synchronized Floquet XY model, where FDQPT occurs at any driven frequency depending on the initial condition at infinite or finite temperature, the imaginary part of the OTOCs become zero whenever the system shows FDQPT.

A two-way approach to out-of-time-order correlators

Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) are a standard measure of quantum chaos. Of the four operators involved, one pair may be regarded as a source and the other as a probe. A usual approach, applicable to large-N systems such as the SYK model, is to replace the actual source with some mean-field perturbation and solve for the probe correlation function on the double Keldysh contour. We show how to obtain the OTOC by combining two such solutions for perturbations propagating forward and backward in time. These dynamical perturbations, or scrambling modes, are considered on the thermofield double background and decomposed into a coherent and an incoherent part. For the large-q SYK, we obtain the OTOC in a closed form. We also prove a previously conjectured relation between the Lyapunov exponent and high-frequency behavior of the spectral function.

Extremal chaos

In maximally chaotic quantum systems, a class of out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) saturate the Maldacena-Shenker-Stanford (MSS) bound on chaos. Recently, it has been shown that the same OTOCs must also obey an infinite set of (subleading) constraints in any thermal quantum system with a large number of degrees of freedom. In this paper, we find a unique analytic extension of the maximally chaotic OTOC that saturates all the subleading chaos bounds which allow saturation. This extremally chaotic OTOC has the feature that information of the initial perturbation is recovered at very late times. Furthermore, we argue that the extremally chaotic OTOC provides a Källen-Lehmann-type representation for all OTOCs. This representation enables the identification of all analytic completions of maximal chaos as small deformations of extremal chaos in a precise way.

Dynamics of quantum information scrambling under decoherence effects measured via active spin clusters

Developing quantum technologies requires the control and understanding of the non-equilibrium dynamics of quantum information in many-body systems. Local information propagates in the system by creating complex correlations known as information scrambling, as this process prevents extracting the information from local measurements. In this work, we develop a model adapted from solid-state NMR methods, to quantify the information scrambling. The scrambling is measured via time-reversal Loschmidt echoes (LE) and Multiple Quantum Coherences experiments that intrinsically contain imperfections. Considering these imperfections, we derive expressions for out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) to quantify the observable information scrambling based on measuring the number of active spins where the information was spread. Based on the OTOC expressions, decoherence effects arise naturally by the effects of the nonreverted terms in the LE experiment. Decoherence induces localization of the measurable degree of information scrambling. These effects define a localization cluster size for the observable number of active spins that determines a dynamical equilibrium. We contrast the model's predictions with quantum simulations performed with solid-state NMR experiments, that measure the information scrambling with time-reversal echoes with controlled imperfections. An excellent quantitative agreement is found with the dynamics of quantum information scrambling and its localization effects determined from the experimental data. The presented model and derived OTOCs set tools for quantifying the quantum information dynamics of large quantum systems (more than $10^{4}$ spins) consistent with experimental implementations that intrinsically contain imperfections.

Chaos in CFT dual to rotating BTZ

We compute out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) in two-dimensional holographic conformal field theories (CFTs) with different left- and right-moving temperatures. Depending on whether the CFT lives on a spatial line or circle, the dual bulk geometry is a boosted BTZ black brane or a rotating BTZ black hole. In the case when the spatial direction is non-compact, we generalise a computation of Roberts and Stanford and show that to reproduce the correct bulk answer a maximal channel contribution needs to be selected when using the identity block approximation. We use the correspondence between global conformal blocks and geodesic Witten diagrams to extend our results to CFTs on a spatial circle.In [1] it was shown that the OTOC for a rotating BTZ black hole exhibits a periodic modulation about an average exponential decay with Lyapunov exponent 2π/β. In the extremal limit where the black hole is maximally rotating, it was shown in [2] that the OTOC exhibits an average cubic growth, on which is superposed a sawtooth pattern which has small periods of Lyapunov growth due to the non-zero temperature of left-movers in the dual CFT. Our computations explain these results from a dual CFT perspective.

Out-of-time-order correlations and the fine structure of eigenstate thermalization.

Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) have become established as a tool to characterise quantum information dynamics and thermalization in interacting quantum many-body systems. It was recently argued that the expected exponential growth of the OTOC is connected to the existence of correlations beyond those encoded in the standard Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH). We show explicitly, by an extensive numerical analysis of the statistics of operator matrix elements in conjunction with a detailed study of OTOC dynamics, that the OTOC is indeed a precise tool to explore the fine details of the ETH. In particular, while short-time dynamics is dominated by correlations, the long-time saturation behavior gives clear indications of an operator-dependent energy scale ω_{GOE} associated to the emergence of an effective Gaussian random matrix theory. We provide an estimation of the finite-size scaling of ω_{GOE} for the general class of observables composed of sums of local operators in the infinite-temperature regime and found linear behavior for the models considered.