Information scrambling and chaos induced by a Hermitian matrix

Abstract

Given an arbitrary V × V Hermitian matrix H, considered as a finite discrete quantum Hamiltonian, we use methods from graph and ergodic theories to construct a quantum Poincaré map at energy E and a corresponding stochastic classical Poincaré–Markov map at the same energy on an appropriate discrete phase space. This phase space D consists of the directed edges of a graph with V vertices that are in one-to-one correspondence with the non-vanishing off-diagonal elements of H. The correspondence between quantum Poincaré map and classical Poincaré–Markov map is an alternative to the standard quantum–classical correspondence based on a classical limit ℏ→0. Most importantly it can be constructed where no such limit exists. Using standard methods from ergodic theory we then proceed to derive an expression for the Lyapunov exponent Λ(E) of the classical map. It measures the rate of loss of classical information in the dynamics and relates it to the separation of stochastic classical trajectories in the phase space. We suggest that loss of information in the underlying classical dynamics is an indicator for quantum information scrambling.