Dynamical Transition of Operator Size Growth in Quantum Systems Embedded in an Environment

Abstract

In closed generic many-body systems, unitary evolution disperses local quantum information into highly non-local objects, resulting in thermalization. Such a process is called information scrambling, whose swiftness is quantified by the operator size growth. However, for quantum systems embedded in an environment, how the couplings to the environment affect the process of information scrambling quests revelation. Here we predict a dynamical transition in quantum systems with all-to-all interactions accompanied by an environment, which separates two phases. In the dissipative phase, information scrambling halts as the operator size decays with time, while in the scrambling phase, dispersion of information persists and the operator size grows and saturates to an $O(N)$ value in the long-time limit with $N$ the number of degrees of freedom of the systems. The transition is driven by the competition between the system intrinsic and environment propelled scramblings and the environment induced dissipation. Our prediction is derived from a general argument based on epidemiological models and demonstrated analytically via solvable Brownian SYK models. We provide further evidence which suggests that the transition is generic to quantum chaotic systems when coupled to an environment. Our study sheds light on the fundamental behavior of quantum systems in the presence of an environment.