Universal Spreading of Conditional Mutual Information in Noisy Random Circuits

• Main Authors: Lee, Su-un, Oh, Changhun, Wong, Yat, Chen, Senrui, Jiang, Liang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 28.02.2024
• Subjects: Physics - Quantum Physics; Physics - Statistical Mechanics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2402.18548

We study the evolution of conditional mutual information in generic open quantum systems, focusing on one-dimensional random circuits with interspersed local noise. Unlike in noiseless circuits, where conditional mutual information spreads linearly while being bounded by the lightcone, we find that noisy random circuits with an error rate $p$ exhibit superlinear propagation of conditional mutual information, which diverges far beyond the lightcone at a critical circuit depth $t_c \propto p^{-1}$. We demonstrate that the underlying mechanism for such rapid spreading is the combined effect of local noise and a scrambling unitary, which selectively removes short-range correlations while preserving long-range correlations. To analytically capture the dynamics of conditional mutual information in noisy random circuits, we introduce a coarse-graining method, and we validate our theoretical results through numerical simulations. Furthermore, we identify a universal scaling law governing the spreading of conditional mutual information.