Krylov meets Fock: Complementary lenses on quantum dynamics

Abstract

Quantum dynamics in Krylov space can be represented by a particle hopping on a chain whose sites are the Krylov basis vectors. The goal of this work is to extend this idea to the Fock basis, which in turn allows the description of a generic dynamics in terms of a more general, possibly higher-dimensional lattice. This construction has been dubbed the Fock state lattice (FSL), since its sites are identified with Fock states. To analyze the dynamics on the FSL we introduce various measures of the spread of a state, comparing them among themselves and with their Krylov counterparts. We apply our analysis to two models of light-matter interaction studied in quantum optics: the multi-mode Jaynes-Cummings and the Dicke models. We find that, whenever the FSL is not a chain, the corresponding dynamics provides insights complementary to the Krylov space analysis and, in some instances, greater analytical control. For example, we obtain analytical results for the FSL spread measures of the Dicke model in the thermodynamic limit and determine that their scaling in time detects the superradiant phase transition.