Vijay Balasubramanian: Quantum chaos and the complexity of time evolution

Vijay Balasubramanian, University of Pennsylvania

Event Date
2026-01-28
Event Time
04:00 pm ~ 05:00 pm
Event Location
617 Wachman Hall

I will describe new ideas relating quantum chaos to the complexity of time evolution.  One approach treats physical time evolution as a quantum computation, and bounds the smallest quantum circuit that can simulate this evolution.  The second approach quantifies how ergodically and rapidly a quantum state explores the accessible part of the system's Hilbert space.  I will illustrate how these measures separate integrable and chaotic quantum systems by considering examples including particles on group manifolds, spin chains, quantum billiards, and Random Matrix Theory.  I will end by describing an application of these methods to a conjecture that geometrizes complexity in quantum gravity.