Explicit Connections Between Krylov and Nielsen Complexity

Abstract

We establish a direct correspondence between Krylov and Nielsen complexity by choosing the Krylov basis to be part of the elementary gate set of Nielsen geometry and selecting a Nielsen complexity metric compatible with the Krylov metric. Up to normalization, the Krylov complexity of a Hermitian operator then equals the length squared of a straight-line trajectory on the manifold of unitaries that connects the identity operator with a precursor operator. The corresponding length provides an upper bound on Nielsen complexity that saturates whenever the straight line is a minimal geodesic. While for general systems we can only establish saturation in the limit of small precursors, we provide evidence that in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model there is a precise correspondence between Krylov complexity and (the square of) Nielsen complexity for a finite range of precursors.