A Butterfly Effect in Encoding-Decoding Quantum Circuits

Abstract: The study of information scrambling has profoundly deepened our understanding of many-body quantum systems. Much recent research has been devote to understanding the interplay between scrambling and decoherence in open systems. Continuing in this vein, we investigate scrambling in a noisy encoding-decoding circuit model. Specifically, we consider an $L$-qubit circuit consisting of a Haar-random unitary, followed by noise acting on a subset of qubits, and then by the inverse unitary. Scrambling is measured using the bipartite algebraic out-of-time-order correlator ($\mathcal{A}$-OTOC), which allows us to track information spread between extensively sized subsystems. We derive an analytic expression for the $\mathcal{A}$-OTOC that depends on system size and noise strength. In the thermodynamic limit, this system displays a \textit{butterfly effect} in which infinitesimal noise induces macroscopic information scrambling. We also perform numerical simulations while relaxing the condition of Haar-randomness, which preliminarily suggest that this effect may manifest in a larger set of circuits.