Detecting Measurement-Induced Entanglement Transitions with Unitary Mirror Circuits.

Monitored random circuits, consisting of alternating layers of entangling two-qubit gates and projective single-qubit measurements applied to some fraction p of the qubits, have been a topic of recent interest. In particular, the resulting steady state exhibits a phase transition from highly correlated states with "volume-law" entanglement at pp_{c}. It is hard to access this transition experimentally, as it cannot be seen at the ensemble level.

Glass transition of quantum hard spheres in high dimensions.

We study the equilibrium thermodynamics of quantum hard spheres in the infinite-dimensional limit, determining the boundary between liquid and glass phases in the temperature-density plane by means of the Franz-Parisi potential. We find that as the temperature decreases from high values, the effective radius of the spheres is enhanced by a multiple of the thermal de Broglie wavelength, thus increasing the effective filling fraction and decreasing the critical density for the glass phase. Numerical calculations show that the critical density continues to decrease monotonically as the temperature decreases further, suggesting that the system will form a glass at sufficiently low temperatures for any density.

Accelerating Cosmology from a Holographic Wormhole.

We consider cosmological models in which the cosmology is related via analytic continuation to a Euclidean asymptotically AdS planar wormhole geometry defined holographically via a pair of three-dimensional Euclidean conformal field theories (CFTs). We argue that these models can generically give rise to an accelerating phase for the cosmology due to the potential energy of scalar fields associated with relevant scalar operators in the CFT. We explain how cosmological observables are related to observables in the wormhole spacetime and argue that this leads to a novel perspective on naturalness puzzles in cosmology.

Operator growth from global out-of-time-order correlators.

In chaotic many-body systems, scrambling or the operator growth can be diagnosed by out-of-time-order correlators of local operators. We show that operator growth also has a sharp imprint in out-of-time-order correlators of global operators. In particular, the characteristic spacetime shape of growing local operators can be accessed using global measurements without any local control or readout.

Measurement-Induced Phase Transition in the Monitored Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev Model.

We construct Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) chains subjected to continuous monitoring and explore possible entanglement phase transitions therein. We analytically derive the effective action in the large-N limit and show that an entanglement transition is caused by the symmetry breaking in the enlarged replica space. In the noninteracting case with SYK_{2} chains, the model features a continuous O(2) symmetry between two replicas and a transition corresponding to spontaneous breaking of that symmetry upon varying the measurement rate.

Exponential Ramp in the Quadratic Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev Model.

A long period of linear growth in the spectral form factor provides a universal diagnostic of quantum chaos at intermediate times. By contrast, the behavior of the spectral form factor in disordered integrable many-body models is not well understood. Here we study the two-body Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and show that the spectral form factor features an exponential ramp, in sharp contrast to the linear ramp in chaotic models.

Minimal Model for Fast Scrambling.

We study quantum information scrambling in spin models with both long-range all-to-all and short-range interactions. We argue that a simple global, spatially homogeneous interaction together with local chaotic dynamics is sufficient to give rise to fast scrambling, which describes the spread of quantum information over the entire system in a time that is logarithmic in the system size. This is illustrated in two tractable models: (1) a random circuit with Haar random local unitaries and a global interaction and (2) a classical model of globally coupled nonlinear oscillators.

Characterization of quantum chaos by two-point correlation functions.

We propose a characterization of quantum many-body chaos: given a collection of simple operators, the set of all possible pair correlations between these operators can be organized into a matrix with a random-matrix-like spectrum. This approach is particularly useful for locally interacting systems, which do not generically show exponential Lyapunov growth of out-of-time-ordered correlators. We demonstrate the validity of this characterization by numerically studying the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and a one-dimensional spin chain with random magnetic field (XXZ model).

Operator Lévy Flight: Light Cones in Chaotic Long-Range Interacting Systems.

We argue that chaotic power-law interacting systems have emergent limits on information propagation, analogous to relativistic light cones, which depend on the spatial dimension d and the exponent α governing the decay of interactions. Using the dephasing nature of quantum chaos, we map the problem to a stochastic model with a known phase diagram. A linear light cone results for α≥d+1/2.

Scrambling Dynamics across a Thermalization-Localization Quantum Phase Transition.

We study quantum information scrambling, specifically the growth of Heisenberg operators, in large disordered spin chains using matrix product operator dynamics to scan across the thermalization-localization quantum phase transition. We observe ballistic operator growth for weak disorder, and a sharp transition to a phase with subballistic operator spreading. The critical disorder strength for the ballistic to subballistic transition is well below the many body localization phase transition, as determined from finite size scaling of energy eigenstate entanglement entropy in small chains.

Universal Prethermal Dynamics in Gross-Neveu-Yukawa Criticality.

We study the prethermal dynamics of the Gross-Neveu-Yukawa quantum field theory, suddenly quenched in the vicinity of a critical point. We find that the universal prethermal dynamics is controlled by two fixed points depending on the size of the quench. Besides the usual equilibrium chiral Ising fixed point for a shallow quench, a dynamical chiral Ising fixed point is identified for a deep quench.

Lieb-Robinson Bound and the Butterfly Effect in Quantum Field Theories.

As experiments are increasingly able to probe the quantum dynamics of systems with many degrees of freedom, it is interesting to probe fundamental bounds on the dynamics of quantum information. We elaborate on the relationship between one such bound-the Lieb-Robinson bound-and the butterfly effect in strongly coupled quantum systems. The butterfly effect implies the ballistic growth of local operators in time, which can be quantified with the "butterfly" velocity v_{B}.

Holographic Complexity Equals Bulk Action?

We conjecture that the quantum complexity of a holographic state is dual to the action of a certain spacetime region that we call a Wheeler-DeWitt patch. We illustrate and test the conjecture in the context of neutral, charged, and rotating black holes in anti-de Sitter spacetime, as well as black holes perturbed with static shells and with shock waves. This conjecture evolved from a previous conjecture that complexity is dual to spatial volume, but appears to be a major improvement over the original.

Reconstructing quantum states from local data.

We consider the problem of reconstructing global quantum states from local data. Because the reconstruction problem has many solutions in general, we consider the reconstructed state of maximum global entropy consistent with the local data. We show that unique ground states of local Hamiltonians are exactly reconstructed as the maximal entropy state.

Entanglement sum rules.

We compute the entanglement entropy of a wide class of models that may be characterized as describing matter coupled to gauge fields. Our principle result is an entanglement sum rule that states that the entropy of the full system is the sum of the entropies of the two components. In the context of the models we consider, this result applies to the full entropy, but more generally it is a statement about the additivity of universal terms in the entropy.

Singularity of the London penetration depth at quantum critical points in superconductors.

We present a general theory of the singularity in the London penetration depth at symmetry-breaking and topological quantum critical points within a superconducting phase. While the critical exponents and ratios of amplitudes on the two sides of the transition are universal, an overall sign depends upon the interplay between the critical theory and the underlying Fermi surface. We determine these features for critical points to spin density wave and nematic ordering, and for a topological transition between a superconductor with Z2 fractionalization and a conventional superconductor.

Entanglement entropy and the Fermi surface.

Free fermions with a finite Fermi surface are known to exhibit an anomalously large entanglement entropy. The leading contribution to the entanglement entropy of a region of linear size L in d spatial dimensions is S∼L(d-1)logL, a result that should be contrasted with the usual boundary law S∼L(d-1). This term depends only on the geometry of the Fermi surface and on the boundary of the region in question.