No Arabic abstract
We study quantum many-body systems with a global U(1) conservation law, focusing on a theory of $N$ interacting fermions with charge conservation, or $N$ interacting spins with one conserved component of total spin. We define an effective operator size at finite chemical potential through suitably regularized out-of-time-ordered correlation functions. The growth rate of this density-dependent operator size vanishes algebraically with charge density; hence we obtain new bounds on Lyapunov exponents and butterfly velocities in charged systems at a given density, which are parametrically stronger than any Lieb-Robinson bound. We argue that the density dependence of our bound on the Lyapunov exponent is saturated in the charged Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. We also study random automaton quantum circuits and Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models, each of which exhibit a different density dependence for the Lyapunov exponent, and explain the discrepancy. We propose that our results are a cartoon for understanding Planckian-limited energy-conserving dynamics at finite temperature.
The spectral form factor (SFF), characterizing statistics of energy eigenvalues, is a key diagnostic of many-body quantum chaos. In addition, partial spectral form factors (pSFFs) can be defined which refer to subsystems of the many-body system. They provide unique insights into energy eigenstate statistics of many-body systems, as we show in an analysis on the basis of random matrix theory and of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. We propose a protocol which allows the measurement of SFF and pSFFs in quantum many-body spin models, within the framework of randomized measurements. Aimed to probe dynamical properties of quantum many-body systems, our scheme employs statistical correlations of local random operations which are applied at different times in a single experiment. Our protocol provides a unified testbed to probe many-body quantum chaotic behavior, thermalization and many-body localization in closed quantum systems which we illustrate with simulations for Hamiltonian and Floquet many-body spin-systems.
Coupling a quantum many-body system to an external environment dramatically changes its dynamics and offers novel possibilities not found in closed systems. Of special interest are the properties of the steady state of such open quantum many-body systems, as well as the relaxation dynamics towards the steady state. However, new computational tools are required to simulate open quantum many-body systems, as methods developed for closed systems cannot be readily applied. We review several approaches to simulate open many-body systems and point out the advances made in recent years towards the simulation of large system sizes.
We propose a non-linear, hybrid quantum-classical scheme for simulating non-equilibrium dynamics of strongly correlated fermions described by the Hubbard model in a Bethe lattice in the thermodynamic limit. Our scheme implements non-equilibrium dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) and uses a digital quantum simulator to solve a quantum impurity problem whose parameters are iterated to self-consistency via a classically computed feedback loop where quantum gate errors can be partly accounted for. We analyse the performance of the scheme in an example case.
Matrix Product States form the basis of powerful simulation methods for ground state problems in one dimension. Their power stems from the fact that they faithfully approximate states with a low amount of entanglement, the area law. In this work, we establish the mixed state analogue of this result: We show that one-dimensional mixed states with a low amount of entanglement, quantified by the entanglement of purification, can be efficiently approximated by Matrix Product Density Operators (MPDOs). In combination with results establishing area laws for thermal states, this helps to put the use of MPDOs in the simulation of thermal states on a formal footing.
One of the key tasks in physics is to perform measurements in order to determine the state of a system. Often, measurements are aimed at determining the values of physical parameters, but one can also ask simpler questions, such as is the system in state A or state B?. In quantum mechanics, the latter type of measurements can be studied and optimized using the framework of quantum hypothesis testing. In many cases one can explicitly find the optimal measurement in the limit where one has simultaneous access to a large number $n$ of identical copies of the system, and estimate the expected error as $n$ becomes large. Interestingly, error estimates turn out to involve various quantum information theoretic quantities such as relative entropy, thereby giving these quantities operational meaning. In this paper we consider the application of quantum hypothesis testing to quantum many-body systems and quantum field theory. We review some of the necessary background material, and study in some detail the situation where the two states one wants to distinguish are parametrically close. The relevant error estimates involve quantities such as the variance of relative entropy, for which we prove a new inequality. We explore the optimal measurement strategy for spin chains and two-dimensional conformal field theory, focusing on the task of distinguishing reduced density matrices of subsystems. The optimal strategy turns out to be somewhat cumbersome to implement in practice, and we discuss a possible alternative strategy and the corresponding errors.