Chaos and thermalization in Clifford-Floquet dynamics

Abstract

We study the ergodic properties of a unitary Floquet dynamics arising from the repeated application of a translationally-invariant Clifford Quantum Cellular Automata to an infinite system of qubits in d dimensions. One expects that if the QCA does not exhibit any periodicity, a generic initial state of qubits will thermalize, that is, approach the infinite-temperature state. We show that this is true for many classes of states, both pure and mixed. In particular, this is true for all initial states that are short-range entangled and close to the equilibrium state. We also point out a subtle distinction between weak and strong thermalization.