Spread complexity and quantum chaos for periodically driven spin chains (2405.16182v2)

Abstract: The complexity of quantum states under dynamical evolution can be investigated by studying the spread with time of the state over a pre-defined basis. It is known that this complexity is minimised by choosing the Krylov basis, thus defining the spread complexity. We study the dynamics of spread complexity for quantum maps using the Arnoldi iterative procedure. The main illustrative quantum many-body model we use is the periodically kicked Ising spin-chain with non-integrable deformations, a chaotic system where we look at both local and non-local interactions. In the various cases we find distinctive behaviour of the Arnoldi coefficients and spread complexity for regular vs. chaotic dynamics: suppressed fluctuations in the Arnoldi coefficients as well as larger saturation value in spread complexity in the chaotic case. We compare the behaviour of the Krylov measures with that of standard spectral diagnostics of chaos. We also study the effect of changing the driving frequency on the complexity saturation.