Arbitrary relaxation rate under non-Hermitian matrix iterations

Abstract

We study the exponential relaxation of observables propagated with a non-Hermitian transfer matrix, an example being out-of-time-ordered correlations (OTOC) in brick-wall (BW) random quantum circuits. Until a time that scales as the system size, the exponential decay of observables is not usually determined by the second largest eigenvalue of the transfer matrix, as one can naively expect, but it is, in general, slower—this slower decay rate was dubbed “phantom eigenvalue.” Generally, this slower decay is given by the largest value in the pseudospectrum of the transfer matrix; however, we show that the decay rate can be an arbitrary value between the second largest eigenvalue and the largest value in the pseudospectrum. This arbitrary decay can be observed, for example, in the propagation of OTOC in periodic boundary conditions BW circuits. To explore this phenomenon, we study a matrix iteration made from a simple tridiagonal Toeplitz matrix. This setting can be used to propagate OTOC in random circuits with open boundary conditions and to describe a one-dimensional biased random walk with dissipation at the edges. Published by the American Physical Society 2024