Information scrambling vs. decoherence -- two competing sinks for entropy

Date

2021-01-13

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Touil, Akram and Sebastian Deffner. "Information Scrambling versus Decoherence—Two Competing Sinks for Entropy." PRX Quantum 2, 010306 (13 January 2021). https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.2.010306

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Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Subjects

Abstract

A possible solution of the information paradox can be sought in quantum information scrambling. In this paradigm, it is postulated that all information entering a black hole is rapidly and chaotically distributed across the event horizon making it impossible to reconstruct the information by means of any local measurement. However, in this scenario the effects of decoherence are typically ignored, which may render information scrambling moot in cosmological settings. In this work, we develop key steps towards a thermodynamic description of information scrambling in open quantum systems. In particular, we separate the entropy production into contributions arising from scrambling and decoherence, for which we derive statements of the second law. This is complemented with a numerical study of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev, Maldacena-Qi, XXX, mixed field Ising, Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick models in the presence of decoherence in energy or computational basis.