Chaos and complexity by design

Abstract

We study the relationship between quantum chaos and pseudorandomness by developing probes of unitary design. A natural probe of randomness is the "frame potential," which is minimized by unitary $k$-designs and measures the $2$-norm distance between the Haar random unitary ensemble and another ensemble. A natural probe of quantum chaos is out-of-time-order (OTO) four-point correlation functions. We show that the norm squared of a generalization of out-of-time-order $2k$-point correlators is proportional to the $k$th frame potential, providing a quantitative connection between chaos and pseudorandomness. Additionally, we prove that these $2k$-point correlators for Pauli operators completely determine the $k$-fold channel of an ensemble of unitary operators. Finally, we use a counting argument to obtain a lower bound on the quantum circuit complexity in terms of the frame potential. This provides a direct link between chaos, complexity, and randomness.