The Scrooge ensemble in many-body quantum systems

Abstract

In many physical settings, the statistical properties of quantum states are thought to be described by the Scrooge ensemble, a more structured generalization of the Haar ensemble. In this work, we prove several key results on the properties and complexity of Scrooge-random states in macroscopic quantum systems, and provide a general-purpose calculus for evaluating their moments. A key theme of our results is a separation between universal random fluctuations in non-local properties and exponential concentration of all local properties. Implications for device benchmarking, sampling advantages beyond random circuits, quantum complexity growth, and the physical origin of Scrooge-random states are discussed.