Exposing hypersensitivity in quantum chaotic dynamics

Phys Rev E. 2023 Dec;108(6-1):064212. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.108.064212.

Abstract

We study hypersensitivity to initial-state perturbation in the unitary dynamics of a multiqubit system. We use the quantum state metric, introduced by Girolami and Anza [Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 170502 (2021)0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.126.170502], which can be interpreted as a quantum Hamming distance. To provide a proof of principle, we take the multiqubit implementation of the quantum kicked top, a paradigmatic system known to exhibit quantum chaotic behavior. Our findings confirm that the observed hypersensitivity corresponds to commonly used signatures of quantum chaos. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the proposed metric can detect quantum chaos in the same regime and under analogous initial conditions as in the corresponding classical case.