Quantum complexity and localization in random and time-periodic unitary circuits
Phys. Rev. B 113, 214312 – Published 12 June, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/mf2z-mrpd
Abstract
We study the growth and saturation of complexity in Krylov basis in random quantum circuits. In Haar-random unitary evolution, we show that, for large system sizes, this notion of complexity grows linearly before saturating at a late-time value of , where is the Hilbert space dimension, at timescales . Our numerical analysis encompasses two classes of random circuits: brick-wall random unitary circuits and Floquet random circuits. In brick-wall case, complexity in the Krylov basis exhibits dynamics consistent with Haar-random unitary evolution, while the inclusion of measurements significantly slows its growth down. For Floquet random circuits, we show that localized phases lead to reduced late-time saturation values of the complexity enabling us to probe the transition between thermal and many-body localized phases.