Information Scrambling over Bipartitions: Equilibration, Entropy Production, and Typicality.

In recent years, the out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) has emerged as a diagnostic tool for information scrambling in quantum many-body systems. Here, we present exact analytical results for the OTOC for a typical pair of random local operators supported over two regions of a bipartition. Quite remarkably, we show that this "bipartite OTOC" is equal to the operator entanglement of the evolution, and we determine its interplay with entangling power. Furthermore, we compute long-time averages of the OTOC and reveal their connection with eigenstate entanglement. For Hamiltonian systems, we uncover a hierarchy of constraints over the structure of the spectrum and elucidate how this affects the equilibration value of the OTOC. Finally, we provide operational significance to this bipartite OTOC by unraveling intimate connections with average entropy production and scrambling of information at the level of quantum channels.

Quantifying the Incompatibility of Quantum Measurements Relative to a Basis.

Motivated by quantum resource theories, we introduce a notion of incompatibility for quantum measurements relative to a reference basis. The notion arises by considering states diagonal in that basis and investigating whether probability distributions associated with different quantum measurements can be converted into one another by probabilistic postprocessing. The induced preorder over quantum measurements is directly related to multivariate majorization and gives rise to families of monotones, i.e., scalar quantifiers that preserve the ordering. For the case of orthogonal measurement we establish a quantitative connection between incompatibility, quantum coherence and entropic uncertainty relations. We generalize the construction to include arbitrary positive-operator-valued measurements and report complete families of monotones.

Quantum algorithms for topological and geometric analysis of data.

Extracting useful information from large data sets can be a daunting task. Topological methods for analysing data sets provide a powerful technique for extracting such information. Persistent homology is a sophisticated tool for identifying topological features and for determining how such features persist as the data is viewed at different scales. Here we present quantum machine learning algorithms for calculating Betti numbers--the numbers of connected components, holes and voids--in persistent homology, and for finding eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the combinatorial Laplacian. The algorithms provide an exponential speed-up over the best currently known classical algorithms for topological data analysis.

Coherent quantum dynamics in steady-state manifolds of strongly dissipative systems.

Recently, it has been realized that dissipative processes can be harnessed and exploited to the end of coherent quantum control and information processing. In this spirit, we consider strongly dissipative quantum systems admitting a nontrivial manifold of steady states. We show how one can enact adiabatic coherent unitary manipulations, e.g., quantum logical gates, inside this steady-state manifold by adding a weak, time-rescaled, Hamiltonian term into the system's Liouvillian. The effective long-time dynamics is governed by a projected Hamiltonian which results from the interplay between the weak unitary control and the fast relaxation process. The leakage outside the steady-state manifold entailed by the Hamiltonian term is suppressed by an environment-induced symmetrization of the dynamics. We present applications to quantum-computation in decoherence-free subspaces and noiseless subsystems and numerical analysis of nonadiabatic errors.

Universal time fluctuations in near-critical out-of-equilibrium quantum dynamics.

Out-of-equilibrium quantum systems display complex temporal patterns. Such time fluctuations are generically exponentially small in the system volume and therefore can be safely ignored in most of the cases. However, if one consider small quench experiments, time fluctuations can be greatly enhanced. We show that time fluctuations may become stronger than other forms of equilibrium quantum fluctuations if the quench is performed close to a critical point. For sufficiently relevant operators the full distribution function of dynamically evolving observable expectation values becomes a universal function uniquely characterized by the critical exponents and the boundary conditions. At regular points of the phase diagram and for nonsufficiently relevant operators the distribution becomes Gaussian. Our predictions are confirmed by an explicit calculation on the quantum Ising model.

Quantum information-geometry of dissipative quantum phase transitions.

A general framework for analyzing the recently discovered phase transitions in the steady state of dissipation-driven open quantum systems is still lacking. To fill this gap, we extend the so-called fidelity approach to quantum phase transitions to open systems whose steady state is a Gaussian fermionic state. We endow the manifold of correlation matrices of steady states with a metric tensor g measuring the distinguishability distance between solutions corresponding to a different set of control parameters. The phase diagram can then be mapped out in terms of the scaling behavior of g and connections with the Liouvillean gap and the model correlation functions unveiled. We argue that the fidelity approach, thanks to its differential-geometric and information-theoretic nature, provides insights into dissipative quantum critical phenomena as well as a general and powerful strategy to explore them.

Fluctuation theorems for quantum processes.

We present fluctuation theorems and moment generating function equalities for generalized thermodynamic observables and quantum dynamics described by completely positive trace preserving maps, with and without feedback control. Our results include the quantum Jarzynski equality and Crooks fluctuation theorem, and clarify the special role played by the thermodynamic work and thermal equilibrium states in previous studies. We show that for a specific class of generalized measurements, which include projective measurements, unitality replaces microreversibility as the condition for the physicality of the reverse process in our fluctuation theorems. We present an experimental application of our theory to the problem of extracting the system-bath coupling magnitude, which we do for a system of pairs of coupled superconducting flux qubits undergoing quantum annealing.

Local response of topological order to an external perturbation.

We study the behavior of the Rényi entropies for the toric code subject to a variety of different perturbations, by means of 2D density matrix renormalization group and analytical methods. We find that Rényi entropies of different index α display derivatives with opposite sign, as opposed to typical symmetry breaking states, and can be detected on a very small subsystem regardless of the correlation length. This phenomenon is due to the presence in the phase of a point with flat entanglement spectrum, zero correlation length, and area law for the entanglement entropy. We argue that this kind of splitting is common to all the phases with a certain group theoretic structure, including quantum double models, cluster states, and other quantum spin liquids. The fact that the size of the subsystem does not need to scale with the correlation length makes it possible for this effect to be accessed experimentally.

Gaussian equilibration.

A finite quantum system evolving unitarily equilibrates in a probabilistic fashion. In the general many-body setting the time fluctuations of an observable A are typically exponentially small in the system size. We consider here quasifree Fermi systems where the Hamiltonian and observables are quadratic in the Fermi operators. We first prove a bound on the temporal fluctuations ΔA(2) and then map the equilibration dynamics to a generalized classical XY model in the infinite temperature limit. Using this insight, we conjecture that, in most cases, a central limit theorem can be formulated, leading to what we call Gaussian equilibration: observables display a Gaussian distribution with relative error ΔA/A[over ¯]=O(L(-1/2)), where L is the dimension of the single-particle space. The conjecture, corroborated by numerical evidence, is proven analytically under mild assumptions for the magnetization in the quantum XY model and for a class of observables in a tight-binding model. We also show that the variance is discontinuous at the transition between a quasifree model and a nonintegrable one.

Adiabatic quantum algorithm for search engine ranking.

We propose an adiabatic quantum algorithm for generating a quantum pure state encoding of the PageRank vector, the most widely used tool in ranking the relative importance of internet pages. We present extensive numerical simulations which provide evidence that this algorithm can prepare the quantum PageRank state in a time which, on average, scales polylogarithmically in the number of web pages. We argue that the main topological feature of the underlying web graph allowing for such a scaling is the out-degree distribution. The top-ranked log(n) entries of the quantum PageRank state can then be estimated with a polynomial quantum speed-up. Moreover, the quantum PageRank state can be used in "q-sampling" protocols for testing properties of distributions, which require exponentially fewer measurements than all classical schemes designed for the same task. This can be used to decide whether to run a classical update of the PageRank.

Quantum entanglement in random physical states.

Most states in the Hilbert space are maximally entangled. This fact has proven useful to investigate--among other things--the foundations of statistical mechanics. Unfortunately, most states in the Hilbert space of a quantum many-body system are not physically accessible. We define physical ensembles of states acting on random factorized states by a circuit of length k of random and independent unitaries with local support. We study the typicality of entanglement by means of the purity of the reduced state. We find that for a time k=O(1), the typical purity obeys the area law. Thus, the upper bounds for area law are actually saturated, on average, with a variance that goes to zero for large systems. Similarly, we prove that by means of local evolution a subsystem of linear dimensions L is typically entangled with a volume law when the time scales with the size of the subsystem. Moreover, we show that for large values of k the reduced state becomes very close to the completely mixed state.

Exact infinite-time statistics of the Loschmidt echo for a quantum quench.

The equilibration dynamics of a closed quantum system is encoded in the long-time distribution function of generic observables. In this Letter we consider the Loschmidt echo generalized to finite temperature, and show that we can obtain an exact expression for its long-time distribution for a closed system described by a quantum XY chain following a sudden quench. In the thermodynamic limit the logarithm of the Loschmidt echo becomes normally distributed, whereas for small quenches in the opposite, quasicritical regime, the distribution function acquires a universal double-peaked form indicating poor equilibration. These findings, obtained by a central limit theorem-type result, extend to completely general models in the small-quench regime.

Quantum chaos and operator fidelity metric.

We show that the recently introduced operator fidelity metric provides a natural tool to investigate the crossover to quantum chaotic behavior. This metric is an information-theoretic measure of the global stability of a unitary evolution against perturbations. We use random matrix theory arguments to conjecture that the operator fidelity metric can be used to discriminate phases with regular behavior from quantum chaotic ones. A numerical study of the onset of chaotic in the Dicke model is given in order to support the conjecture.

Transition to chaos of coupled oscillators: an operator fidelity susceptibility study.

The operator fidelity is a measure of the information-theoretic distinguishability between perturbed and unperturbed evolutions. The response of this measure to the perturbation may be formulated in terms of the operator fidelity susceptibility (OFS), a quantity which has been used to investigate the parameter spaces of quantum systems in order to discriminate their regular and chaotic regimes. In this work we numerically study the OFS for a pair of nonlinearly coupled two-dimensional harmonic oscillators, a model which is equivalent to that of a hydrogen atom in a uniform external magnetic field. We show how the two terms of the OFS, being linked to the main properties that differentiate regular from chaotic behavior, allow for the detection of this model's transition between the two regimes. In addition, we find that the parameter interval where perturbation theory applies is delimited from above by a local minimum of one of the analyzed terms.

Fidelity approach to the disordered quantum XY model.

We study the random XY spin chain in a transverse field by analyzing the susceptibility of the ground state fidelity, numerically evaluated through a standard mapping of the model onto quasifree fermions. It is found that the fidelity susceptibility and its scaling properties provide useful information about the phase diagram. In particular it is possible to determine the Ising critical line and the Griffiths phase regions, in agreement with previous analytical and numerical results.

Information-theoretic differential geometry of quantum phase transitions.

The manifold of coupling constants parametrizing a quantum Hamiltonian is equipped with a natural Riemannian metric with an operational distinguishability content. We argue that the singularities of this metric are in correspondence with the quantum phase transitions featured by the corresponding system. This approach provides a universal conceptual framework to study quantum critical phenomena which is differential geometric and information theoretic at the same time.

Quantum critical scaling of the geometric tensors.

Berry phases and the quantum-information theoretic notion of fidelity have been recently used to analyze quantum phase transitions from a geometrical perspective. In this Letter we unify these two approaches showing that the underlying mechanism is the critical singular behavior of a complex tensor over the Hamiltonian parameter space. This is achieved by performing a scaling analysis of this quantum geometric tensor in the vicinity of the critical points. In this way most of the previous results are understood on general grounds and new ones are found. We show that criticality is not a sufficient condition to ensure superextensive divergence of the geometric tensor, and state the conditions under which this is possible. The validity of this analysis is further checked by exact diagonalization of the spin-1/2 XXZ Heisenberg chain.

Ground state overlap and quantum phase transitions.

We present a characterization of quantum phase transitions in terms of the the overlap function between two ground states obtained for two different values of external parameters. On the examples of the Dicke and XY models, we show that the regions of criticality of a system are marked by the extremal points of the overlap and functions closely related to it. Further, we discuss the connections between this approach and the Anderson orthogonality catastrophe as well as with the dynamical study of the Loschmidt echo for critical systems.

Geometric quantum computation and multiqubit entanglement with superconducting qubits inside a cavity.

We analyze a new scheme for quantum information processing, with superconducting charge qubits coupled through a cavity mode, in which quantum manipulations are insensitive to the state of the cavity. We illustrate how to physically implement universal quantum computation as well as multiqubit entanglement based on unconventional geometric phase shifts in this scalable solid-state system. Some quantum error-correcting codes can also be easily constructed using the same technique. In view of the gate dependence on just global geometric features and the insensitivity to the state of cavity modes, the proposed quantum operations may result in high-fidelity quantum information processing.

Quantum tensor product structures are observable induced.

It is argued that the partition of a quantum system into subsystems is dictated by the set of operationally accessible interactions and measurements. The emergence of a multipartite tensor product structure of the state space and the associated notion of quantum entanglement are then relative and observable induced. We develop a general algebraic framework aimed to formalize this concept.