We present exact results for the classical version of the Out-of-Time-Order Commutator (OTOC) for a family of power-law models consisting of $N$ particles in one dimension and confined by an external harmonic potential. These particles are interacting via power-law interaction of the form $\propto \sum_{\substack{i, j=1 (i\neq j)}}^N|x_i-x_j|^{-k}$ $\forall$ $k>1$ where $x_i$ is the position of the $i^\text{th}$ particle. We present numerical results for the OTOC for finite $N$ at low temperatures and short enough times so that the system is well approximated by the linearized dynamics around the many body ground state. In the large-$N$ limit, we compute the ground-state dispersion relation in the absence of external harmonic potential exactly and use it to arrive at analytical results for OTOC. We find excellent agreement between our analytical results and the numerics. We further obtain analytical results in the limit where only linear and leading nonlinear (in momentum) terms in the dispersion relation are included. The resulting OTOC is in agreement with numerics in the vicinity of the edge of the "light cone". We find remarkably distinct features in OTOC below and above $k=3$ in terms of going from non-Airy behaviour ($1<k<3$) to an Airy universality class ($k>3$). We present certain additional rich features for the case $k=2$ that stem from the underlying integrability of the Calogero-Moser model. We present a field theory approach that also assists in understanding certain aspects of OTOC such as the sound speed. Our findings are a step forward towards a more general understanding of the spatio-temporal spread of perturbations in long-range interacting systems.
Out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOC) have been extensively used as a major tool for exploring quantum chaos and also recently, there has been a classical analogue. Studies have been limited to closed systems. In this work, we probe an open classical many-body system, more specifically, a spatially extended driven dissipative chain of coupled Duffing oscillators using the classical OTOC to investigate the spread and growth (decay) of an initially localized perturbation in the chain. Correspondingly, we find three distinct types of dynamical behavior, namely the sustained chaos, transient chao…
Random quantum circuits yield minimally structured models for chaotic quantum dynamics, able to capture for example universal properties of entanglement growth. We provide exact results and coarse-grained models for the spreading of operators by quantum circuits made of Haar-random unitaries. We study both 1+1D and higher dimensions, and argue that the coarse-grained pictures carry over to operator spreading in generic many-body systems. In 1+1D, we demonstrate that the out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) satisfies a biased diffusion equation, which gives exact results for the spatial profile …
We study the spatial spread of out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) in coupled map lattices (CMLs) of quasiperiodically forced nonlinear maps. We use instantaneous speed (IS) and finite-time Lyapunov exponents (FTLEs) to investigate the role of strange non-chaotic attractors (SNAs) on the spatial spread of the OTOC. We find that these CMLs exhibit a characteristic on and off type of spread of the OTOC for SNA. Further, we provide a broad spectrum of the various dynamical regimes in a two-parameter phase diagram using IS and FTLEs. We substantiate our results by confirming the presence of SN…
We find that localised perturbations in a chaotic classical many-body system-- the classical Heisenberg We find that the effects of a localised perturbation in a chaotic classical many-body system--the classical Heisenberg chain at infinite temperature--spread ballistically with a finite speed even when the local spin dynamics is diffusive. We study two complementary aspects of this butterfly effect: the rapid growth of the perturbation, and its simultaneous ballistic (light-cone) spread, as characterised by the Lyapunov exponents and the butterfly speed respectively. We connect this to recent…
The out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) diagnoses quantum chaos and the scrambling of quantum information via the spread of entanglement. The OTOC encodes forward and reverse evolutions and has deep connections with the flow of time. So do fluctuation relations such as Jarzynski's Equality, derived in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. I unite these two powerful, seemingly disparate tools by deriving a Jarzynski-like equality for the OTOC. The equality's left-hand side equals the OTOC. The right-hand side suggests a protocol for measuring the OTOC indirectly. The protocol is platform-nons…
We review different tensor network approaches to study the spreading of operators in generic nonintegrable quantum systems. As a common ground to all methods, we quantify this spreading by means of the Frobenius norm of the commutator of a spreading operator with a local operator, which is usually referred to as the out of time order correlation (OTOC) function. We compare two approaches based on matrix-product states in the Schrödinger picture: the time dependent block decimation (TEBD) and the time dependent variational principle (TDVP), as well as TEBD based on matrix-product operators dire…
The scrambling of quantum information in closed many-body systems, as measured by out-of-time-ordered correlation functions (OTOCs), has lately received considerable attention. Recently, a hydrodynamical description of OTOCs has emerged from considering random local circuits, aspects of which are conjectured to be universal to ergodic many-body systems, even without randomness. Here we extend this approach to systems with locally conserved quantities (e.g., energy). We do this by considering local random unitary circuits with a conserved U$(1)$ charge and argue, with numerical and analytical e…
Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOC) are considered to be a promising tool to characterize chaos in quantum systems. In this paper we study OTOC in XY model. With the presence of anisotropic parameter $γ$ and external magnetic field $λ$ in the Hamiltonian, we mainly focus on their influences on OTOC in thermodynamical limit. We find that the butterfly speed $v_B$ is dependent of these two parameters, and the recent conjectured universal form which characterizes the wavefront of chaos spreading are proved to be positive with varying $v_B$ in different phases of XY model. Moreover, we also study…
Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln（科隆大学理论物理研究所）；Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems（马克斯·普朗克复杂系统物理研究所）；School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin（都柏林三一学院物理学院）
The far-from-equilibrium dynamics of generic interacting quantum systems is characterized by a handful of universal guiding principles, among them the ballistic spreading of initially local operators. Here, we show that in certain constrained many-body systems the structure of conservation laws can cause a drastic modification of this universal behavior. As an example, we study operator growth characterized by out-of-time-order correlations (OTOCs) in a dipole-conserving fracton chain. We identify a critical point with sub-ballistically moving OTOC front, that separates a ballistic from a dyna…
The dynamical correlations of a strongly correlated system is an essential ingredient to describe its non-equilibrium properties. We present a general method to calculate exactly the dynamical correlations of hard-core anyons in one-dimensional lattices, valid for any type of confining potential and any temperature. We obtain exact explicit expressions of the Green's function, the spectral function, and the out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs). We find that the anyonic spectral function displays three main singularity lines which can be explained as a double spectrum in analogy to the Lieb-…
In a quantum system coupled with a non-Markovian environment, quantum information may flow out of or in to the system. Measuring quantum information flow and its sensitivity to perturbations is important for a better understanding of open quantum systems and for the implementation of quantum technologies. Information gets shared between a quantum system and its environment by means of system-environment correlations (SECs) that grow during their interaction. We design a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiment to directly observe the evolution of the SECs and use the second moment of their …
A microscopic, driven lattice gas model is proposed for the dynamics and spatio-temporal fluctuations of the precursor film observed in spreading experiments. Matter is transported both by holes and particles, and the distribution of each can be described by driven diffusion with a moving boundary. This picture leads to a stochastic partial differential equation for the shape of the boundary, which agrees with the simulations of the lattice gas. Preliminary results for flow in a thermal gradient are discussed.
Spatially extended chaotic systems with power-law decaying interactions are considered. Two coupled replicas of such systems synchronize to a common spatio-temporal chaotic state above a certain coupling strength. The synchronization transition is studied as a nonequilibrium phase transition and its critical properties are analyzed at varying the interaction range. The transition is found to be always continuous, while the critical indexes vary with continuity with the power law exponent characterizing the interaction. Strong numerical evidences indicate that the transition belongs to the {\it…
Water availability is a major environmental driver affecting riparian and wetland vegetation. The interaction between water table fluctuations and vegetation in a stochastic environment contributes to the complexity of the dynamics of these ecosystems. We investigate the possible emergence of spatial patterns induced by spatio-temporal stochastic resonance in a simple model of groundwater-dependent ecosystems. These spatio-temporal dynamics are driven by the combined effect of three components: (i) an additive white Gaussian noise, accounting for external random disturbances such as fires or f…
We study a model of free fermions on a chain with dynamics generated by random unitary gates acting on nearest neighbor bonds and present an exact calculation of time-ordered and out-of-time-ordered correlators. We consider three distinct cases: the random circuit with spatio-temporal disorder (i) with and (ii) without particle number conservation and (iii) the particle non-conserving case with purely temporal disorder. In all three cases, temporal disorder causes diffusive operator spreading and $\sim\sqrt{t}$ entanglement growth. This is in sharp contrast to Anderson localization for the cas…
The synchronization transition between two coupled replicas of spatio-temporal chaotic systems in 2+1 dimensions is studied as a phase transition into an absorbing state - the synchronized state. Confirming the scenario drawn in 1+1 dimensional systems, the transition is found to belong to two different universality classes - Multiplicative Noise (MN) and Directed Percolation (DP) - depending on the linear or nonlinear character of damage spreading occurring in the coupled systems. By comparing coupled map lattice with two different stochastic models, accurate numerical estimates for MN in 2+1…
