Environment-induced information scrambling transition with charge conservations

Abstract

Abstract In generic closed quantum systems, the complexity of operators increases under time evolution governed by the Heisenberg equation, reflecting the scrambling of local quantum information. However, when systems interact with an external environment, the system-environment coupling allows operators to escape from the system, inducing a dynamical transition between the scrambling phase and the dissipative phase. This transition is known as the environment-induced information scrambling transition, originally proposed in Majorana fermion systems. In this work, we advance this discovery by investigating the transition in charge-conserved systems with space-time randomness. We construct solvable Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models of complex fermions coupled to an environment, enabling the analytical computation of operator growth. We determine the critical dissipation strength, which is proportional to $$n(1-n)$$ n ( 1 - n ) with n being the density of the complex fermions, arising from the suppression in the quantum Lyapunova exponent due to the Pauli blockade in the scattering process. We further analyze the density dependence of maximally scrambled operators at late time. Our results shed light on the intriguing interplay between information scrambling, dissipation, and conservation laws.