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Quantum simulation

Probing information scrambling

Nature Physics volume 13, pages 724–726 (2017)Cite this article

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Quantum information encoded in one of many interacting particles quickly becomes scrambled. A set of tools for tracking this process is on its way.

Quantum information can never be entirely lost, but it can be exceedingly well hidden. In interacting systems of many particles, information encoded in a given particle can quickly become diluted among all the degrees of freedom like a drop of dye in the sea — each dye molecule soon to be found everywhere with equal probability. Understanding how quantum information spreads may have wide-ranging implications, from elucidating the information paradox in black holes1,2 to imposing fundamental limits on transport properties of strongly correlated materials3. Writing in Nature Physics, Martin Gärttner and colleagues present a powerful set of tools for directly probing the 'scrambling' of quantum information in an experiment using laser-cooled ions4.

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Figure 1: Quantum mechanical butterfly effect.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Monika Schleier-Smith is at Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-4060, USA,

    Monika Schleier-Smith

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  1. Monika Schleier-Smith
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Correspondence to Monika Schleier-Smith.

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Schleier-Smith, M. Probing information scrambling. Nature Phys 13, 724–726 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys4165

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