Error-Resilient Reversal of Quantum Chaotic Dynamics Enabled by Scramblons
The emergence of the arrow of time in quantum many-body systems stems from the inherent tendency of Hamiltonian evolution to scramble quantum information and increase entanglement. While, in principle, one might counteract this temporal directionality by engineering a perfectly inverted Hamiltonian to reverse entanglement growth, such a scenario is fundamentally unstable because even minor imperfections in the backward evolution can be exponentially amplified, a hallmark of quantum many-body chaos. Therefore, successfully reversing quantum many-body dynamics demands a deep understanding of the underlying structure of quantum information scrambling and chaotic dynamics. In this Letter, by using solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance on a macroscopic ensemble of randomly interacting spins, we measure the out-of-time-ordered correlator and validate key predictions of scramblon theory, a universal theoretical framework for information scrambling. Crucially, this theory enables us to isolate and mitigate errors in the out-of-time-ordered correlator caused by imperfections in the backward evolution. As a result, this protocol uncovers the anticipated exponential behavior of quantum many-body chaos and extracts the quantum Lyapunov exponent in a many-body experimental system for the first time. Our results push the fundamental limits of dynamical reversibility of complex quantum systems, with implications for quantum simulation and metrology.
Authors
- Karl J. Friston
Institutions
- University of Science and Technology of China (CN)
- Chinese University of Hong Kong (HK)
- Fudan University (CN)
- Hefei University (CN)
- Hefei National Center for Physical Sciences at Nanoscale (CN)
- Microscale (United States) (US)
- Zhejiang University (CN)
- Tsinghua University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review Letters
- Published
- 2025-11-20
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/cg3f-rggs
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Quantum chaos and dynamical systems
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.32