Operator Growth in Open Quantum Systems

Understand

The spreading of quantum information in closed systems, often termed scrambling, is a hallmark of many-body quantum dynamics.

• In open systems, scrambling competes with noise, errors and decoherence.
• Here, we provide a universal framework that describes the scrambling of quantum information in open systems: we predict that the effect of open-system dynamics is fundamentally controlled by operator size distributions and independent of the microscopic error mechanism.
• This framework allows us to demonstrate that open quantum systems exhibit universal classes of information dynamics that fundamentally differ from their unitary counterparts.