Circuit Complexity in Fermionic Field Theory

Abstract

We define and calculate versions of complexity for free fermionic quantum field theories in 1+1 and 3+1 dimensions, adopting Nielsen's geodesic perspective in the space of circuits. We do this both by discretizing and identifying appropriate classes of Bogoliubov-Valatin transformations, and also directly in the continuum by defining squeezing operators and their generalizations. As a closely related problem, we consider cMERA tensor networks for fermions: viewing them as paths in circuit space, we compute their path lengths. Certain ambiguities that arise in some of these results because of cut-off dependence are discussed.