Fast Scrambling in Classically Simulable Quantum Circuits

Abstract: We study operator scrambling in quantum circuits built from `super-Clifford' gates. For such circuits it was established in arXiv:2002.12824 that the time evolution of operator entanglement for a large class of many-body operators can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer, including for operators with volume-law entanglement. Here we extend the scope of this formalism in two key ways. Firstly we provide evidence that these classically simulable circuits include examples of fast scramblers, by constructing a circuit for which operator entanglement is numerically found to saturate in a time $t_* \sim \mathrm{ln}(N)$ (with $N$ the number of qubits). Secondly we demonstrate that, in addition to operator entanglement, certain out-of-time ordered correlation functions (OTOCs) can be classically simulated within the same formalism. As a consequence such OTOCs can be computed numerically in super-Clifford circuits with thousands of qubits, and we study several explicit examples in the aforementioned fast scrambling circuits.