- Open Access
Measuring temporal entropies in experiments
Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023229 – Published 1 June, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/436b-cnh8
Abstract
We propose an experimental protocol to measure generalized temporal entropies in many-body quantum systems. Our approach involves using local operators as probes to characterize the out-of-equilibrium dynamics induced by a geometric double quench on a replicated system. Such protocol mimics the path integral on the corresponding Riemann surface encoding generalized temporal entanglement. We present the results of tensor network simulations of one-dimensional systems that validate the protocol and demonstrate the experimental feasibility of measuring generalized temporal entropies, and we outline the experimental requirements for implementing these quenches using state-of-the-art quantum simulators. Therefore, our results provide a physical interpretation of the meaning of generalized temporal entropies. Furthermore, they reveal that the dynamics induced on two replicas of the Ising model in a transverse field differ qualitatively from those of its nonintegrable extension, suggesting that generalized temporal entropies can be used as a tool for identifying different dynamical classes in quantum systems.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Article Text
References (80)
- L. Amico, R. Fazio, A. Osterloh, and V. Vedral, Entanglement in many-body systems, Rev. Mod. Phys. 80, 517 (2008).
- N. Laflorencie, Quantum entanglement in condensed matter systems, Phys. Rep. 646, 1 (2016).
- B. Zeng, X. Chen, D.-L. Zhou, and X.-G. Wen, Quantum Information Meets Quantum Matter, From quantum entanglement to topological phase in many-body systems (Springer New York, NY, 2019).
- C. Callan and F. Wilczek, On geometric entropy, Phys. Lett. B 333, 55 (1994).
- G. Vidal, J. I. Latorre, E. Rico, and A. Kitaev, Entanglement in quantum critical phenomena, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 227902 (2003).
- P. Calabrese and J. Cardy, Entanglement entropy and quantum field theory, J. Stat. Mech. (2004) P06002.
- A. Kitaev and J. Preskill, Topological entanglement entropy, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 110404 (2006).
- M. Levin and X.-G. Wen, Detecting topological order in a ground state wave function, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 110405 (2006).
- P. Calabrese and J. Cardy, Evolution of entanglement entropy in one-dimensional systems, J. Stat. Mech.: Theory Exp. (2005) P04010.
- J. H. Bardarson, F. Pollmann, and J. E. Moore, Unbounded growth of entanglement in models of many-body localization, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 017202 (2012).
- M. Serbyn, Z. Papić, and D. A. Abanin, Universal slow growth of entanglement in interacting strongly disordered systems, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 260601 (2013).
- J. Cardy, Measuring entanglement using quantum quenches, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 150404 (2011).
- D. A. Abanin and E. Demler, Measuring entanglement entropy of a generic many-body system with a quantum switch, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 020504 (2012).
- A. J. Daley, H. Pichler, J. Schachenmayer, and P. Zoller, Measuring entanglement growth in quench dynamics of bosons in an optical lattice, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 020505 (2012).
- R. Islam, R. Ma, P. M. Preiss, M. E. Tai, A. Lukin, M. Rispoli, and M. Greiner, Measuring entanglement entropy in a quantum many-body system, Nature (London) 528, 77 (2015).
- A. M. Kaufman, M. E. Tai, A. Lukin, M. Rispoli, R. Schittko, P. M. Preiss, and M. Greiner, Quantum thermalization through entanglement in an isolated many-body system, Science 353, 794 (2016).
- P. Hauke, M. Heyl, L. Tagliacozzo, and P. Zoller, Measuring multipartite entanglement through dynamic susceptibilities, Nat. Phys. 12, 778 (2016).
- T. Brydges, A. Elben, P. Jurcevic, B. Vermersch, C. Maier, B. P. Lanyon, P. Zoller, R. Blatt, and C. F. Roos, Probing Rényi entanglement entropy via randomized measurements, Science 364, 260 (2019).
- H.-Y. Huang, R. Kueng, and J. Preskill, Predicting many properties of a quantum system from very few measurements, Nat. Phys. 16, 1050 (2020).
- A. Elben, R. Kueng, H.-Y. Huang, R. van Bijnen, C. Kokail, M. Dalmonte, P. Calabrese, B. Kraus, J. Preskill, P. Zoller, and B. Vermersch, Mixed-state entanglement from local randomized measurements Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 200501 (2020).
- M. S. Leifer, Quantum dynamics as an analog of conditional probability, Phys. Rev. A 74, 042310 (2006).
- M. S. Leifer and R. W. Spekkens, Towards a formulation of quantum theory as a causally neutral theory of Bayesian inference, Phys. Rev. A 88, 052130 (2013).
- A. J. Parzygnat and J. Fullwood, From time-reversal symmetry to quantum Bayes’ rules, PRX Quantum 4, 020334 (2023).
- R. P. Feynman. Jr. and F. Vernon, The theory of a general quantum system interacting with a linear dissipative system, Ann. Phys. 24, 118 (1963).
- M. C. Bañuls, M. B. Hastings, F. Verstraete, and J. I. Cirac, Matrix product states for dynamical simulation of infinite chains, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 240603 (2009).
- A. Müller-Hermes, J. I. Cirac, and M. C. Bañuls, Tensor network techniques for the computation of dynamical observables in 1D quantum spin systems, New J. Phys. 14, 075003 (2012).
- M. B. Hastings and R. Mahajan, Connecting entanglement in time and space: Improving the folding algorithm, Phys. Rev. A 91, 032306 (2015).
- A. Lerose, M. Sonner, and D. A. Abanin, Influence matrix approach to many-body Floquet dynamics, Phys. Rev. X 11, 021040 (2021).
- M. Sonner, A. Lerose, and D. A. Abanin, Influence functional of many-body systems: Temporal entanglement and matrix-product state representation, Ann. Phys. 435, 168677 (2021).
- G. Giudice, G. Giudici, M. Sonner, J. Thoenniss, A. Lerose, D. A. Abanin, and L. Piroli, Temporal entanglement, quasiparticles, and the role of interactions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 220401 (2022).
- S. Carignano, C. R. Marimón, and L. Tagliacozzo, Temporal entropy and the complexity of computing the expectation value of local operators after a quench, Phys. Rev. Res. 6, 033021 (2024).
- W.-z. Guo, S. He, and Y.-X. Zhang, Relation between timelike and spacelike entanglement entropy Phys. Rev. D 112, 086020 (2025).
- J. Yao and P. W. Claeys, Temporal entanglement profiles in dual-unitary Clifford circuits with measurements Phys. Rev. Res. 6, 043077 (2024).
- A. Foligno, T. Zhou, and B. Bertini, Temporal entanglement in chaotic quantum circuits, Phys. Rev. X 13, 041008 (2023).
- Y. Nakata, T. Takayanagi, Y. Taki, K. Tamaoka, and Z. Wei, Holographic pseudo entropy, Phys. Rev. D 103, 026005 (2021).
- K. Doi, J. Harper, A. Mollabashi, T. Takayanagi, and Y. Taki, Pseudo entropy in dS/CFT and time-like entanglement entropy, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 031601 (2023).
- K. Doi, J. Harper, A. Mollabashi, T. Takayanagi, and Y. Taki, Timelike entanglement entropy, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2023) 052.
- K. Narayan and H. K. Saini, Notes on time entanglement and pseudo-entropy, Eur. Phys. J. C 84, 499 (2024).
- K. Narayan, De Sitter space, extremal surfaces, and time entanglement, Phys. Rev. D 107, 126004 (2023).
- M. P. Heller, F. Ori, and A. Serantes, Geometric interpretation of timelike entanglement entropy Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 131601 (2025).
- A. Mollabashi, N. Shiba, T. Takayanagi, K. Tamaoka, and Z. Wei, Pseudo-entropy in free quantum field theories, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 081601 (2021).
- S. Murciano, P. Calabrese, and R. M. Konik, Generalized entanglement entropies in two-dimensional conformal field theory, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2022) 152.
- A. Milekhin, Z. Adamska, and J. Preskill, Observable and computable entanglement in time, arXiv:2502.12240.
- G. Vidal, Efficient classical simulation of slightly entangled quantum computations, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 147902 (2003).
- U. Schollwöck, The density-matrix renormalization group in the age of matrix product states, Ann. Phys. 326, 96 (2011).
- S. Paeckel, T. Köhler, A. Swoboda, S. R. Manmana, U. Schollwöck, and C. Hubig, Time-evolution methods for matrix-product states, Ann. Phys. 411, 167998 (2019).
- This relation can be made quantitative, for example, close to the continuum limit of a lattice model (see, e.g., Ref. [48]).
- S. Carignano and L. Tagliacozzo, Loschmidt echo, emerging dual unitarity and scaling of generalized temporal entropies after quenches to the critical point, Quantum 9, 1859 (2025).
- Whenever , with the spatial extent of the system, we will omit it from the definition of the temporal states.
- S. Cerezo-Roquebrún, A. Bou-Comas, J. T. Schneider, E. López, L. Tagliacozzo, and S. Carignano, Spatio-temporal tensor-network approaches to out-of-equilibrium dynamics bridging open and closed systems, Front. Quantum Sci. Technol. 4, 1568471 (2025).
- P. Zanardi, Entanglement of quantum evolutions, Phys. Rev. A 63, 040304 (2001).
- J. Dubail, Entanglement scaling of operators: A conformal field theory approach, with a glimpse of simulability of long-time dynamics in 1+1d, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 50, 234001 (2017).
- P. Pfeuty, The one-dimensional Ising model with a transverse field, Ann. Phys. 57, 79 (1970).
- H. C. Fogedby, The Ising chain in a skew magnetic field, J. Phys. C 11, 2801 (1978).
- A. A. Ovchinnikov, D. V. Dmitriev, V. Y. Krivnov, and V. O. Cheranovskii, Antiferromagnetic Ising chain in a mixed transverse and longitudinal magnetic field, Phys. Rev. B 68, 214406 (2003).
- B. Doyon, Twist fields in many-body physics, Entropy (Basel, Switzerland), 27, 1230 (2025).
- S. R. White, Density matrix formulation for quantum renormalization groups, Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 2863 (1992).
- M. Kormos, M. Collura, G. Takács, and P. Calabrese, Real-time confinement following a quantum quench to a non-integrable model, Nat. Phys. 13, 246 (2017).
- G. Lagnese, F. M. Surace, M. Kormos, and P. Calabrese, False vacuum decay in quantum spin chains, Phys. Rev. B 104, L201106 (2021).
- L. Villa, J. Despres, and L. Sanchez-Palencia, Unraveling the excitation spectrum of many-body systems from quantum quenches, Phys. Rev. A 100, 063632 (2019).
- L. Villa, J. Despres, S. J. Thomson, and L. Sanchez-Palencia, Local quench spectroscopy of many-body quantum systems, Phys. Rev. A 102, 033337 (2020).
- T. Chanda, M. Dalmonte, M. Lewenstein, J. Zakrzewski, and L. Tagliacozzo, Spectral properties of the critical (1+1)-dimensional Abelian-Higgs model, Phys. Rev. B 109, 045103 (2024).
- C. Gross and I. Bloch, Quantum simulations with ultracold atoms in optical lattices, Science 357, 995 (2017).
- A. J. Daley, I. Bloch, C. Kokail, S. Flannigan, N. Pearson, M. Troyer, and P. Zoller, Practical quantum advantage in quantum simulation, Nature (London) 607, 667 (2022).
- H. Bernien, S. Schwartz, A. Keesling, H. Levine, A. Omran, H. Pichler, S. Choi, A. S. Zibrov, M. Endres, M. Greiner, V. Vuletić, and M. D. Lukin, Probing many-body dynamics on a 51-atom quantum simulator, Nature (London) 551, 579 (2017).
- C. Monroe, W. C. Campbell, L.-M. Duan, Z.-X. Gong, A. V. Gorshkov, P. W. Hess, R. Islam, K. Kim, N. M. Linke, G. Pagano, P. Richerme, C. Senko, and N. Y. Yao, Programmable quantum simulations of spin systems with trapped ions, Rev. Mod. Phys. 93, 025001 (2021).
- E. Rosenberg, T. I. Andersen, R. Samajdar, A. Petukhov, J. C. Hoke, D. Abanin, A. Bengtsson, I. K. Drozdov, C. Erickson, P. V. Klimov, et al., Dynamics of magnetization at infinite temperature in a Heisenberg spin chain, Science 384, 48 (2024).
- J. F. Wienand, S. Karch, A. Impertro, C. Schweizer, E. McCulloch, R. Vasseur, S. Gopalakrishnan, M. Aidelsburger, and I. Bloch, Emergence of fluctuating hydrodynamics in chaotic quantum systems, Nat. Phys. 20 1732 (2024).
- G.-X. Su, H. Sun, A. Hudomal, J.-Y. Desaules, Z.-Y. Zhou, B. Yang, J. C. Halimeh, Z.-S. Yuan, Z. Papić, and J.-W. Pan, Observation of unconventional many-body scarring in a quantum simulator, Phys. Rev. Res. 5, 023010 (2023).
- S. Sachdev, K. Sengupta, and S. M. Girvin, Mott insulators in strong electric fields, Phys. Rev. B 66, 075128 (2002).
- C. Schweizer, F. Grusdt, M. Berngruber, L. Barbiero, E. Demler, N. Goldman, I. Bloch, and M. Aidelsburger, Floquet approach to lattice gauge theories with ultracold atoms in optical lattices, Nat. Phys. 15, 1168 (2019).
- B. Yang, H. Sun, R. Ott, H.-Y. Wang, T. V. Zache, J. C. Halimeh, Z.-S. Yuan, P. Hauke, and J.-W. Pan, Observation of gauge invariance in a 71-site Bose–Hubbard quantum simulator, Nature (London) 587, 392 (2020).
- C. Viermann, M. Sparn, N. Liebster, M. Hans, E. Kath, Á. Parra-López, M. Tolosa-Simeón, N. Sánchez-Kuntz, T. Haas, H. Strobel, S. Floerchinger, and M. K. Oberthaler, Quantum field simulator for dynamics in curved spacetime, Nature (London) 611, 260 (2022).
- S.-A. Guo, Y.-K. Wu, J. Ye, L. Zhang, W.-Q. Lian, R. Yao, Y. Wang, R.-Y. Yan, Y.-J. Yi, Y.-L. Xu, B.-W. Li, Y.-H. Hou, Y.-Z. Xu, W.-X. Guo, C. Zhang, B.-X. Qi, Z.-C. Zhou, L. He, and L.-M. Duan, A site-resolved two-dimensional quantum simulator with hundreds of trapped ions, Nature (London) 630, 613 (2024).
- M. Qiao, Z. Cai, Y. Wang, B. Du, N. Jin, W. Chen, P. Wang, C. Luan, E. Gao, X. Sun, H. Tian, J. Zhang, and K. Kim, Tunable quantum simulation of spin models with a two-dimensional ion crystal, Nat. Phys. 20, 623 (2024).
- D. Barredo, S. De Léséleuc, V. Lienhard, T. Lahaye, and A. Browaeys, An atom-by-atom assembler of defect-free arbitrary two-dimensional atomic arrays, Science 354, 1021 (2016).
- H. Labuhn, D. Barredo, S. Ravets, S. de Léséleuc, T. Macrì, T. Lahaye, and A. Browaeys, Tunable two-dimensional arrays of single Rydberg atoms for realizing quantum Ising models, Nature (London) 534, 667 (2016).
- P. Scholl, M. Schuler, H. J. Williams, A. A. Eberharter, D. Barredo, K.-N. Schymik, V. Lienhard, L.-P. Henry, T. C. Lang, T. Lahaye, A. M. Läuchli, and A. Browaeys, Quantum simulation of 2D antiferromagnets with hundreds of Rydberg atoms, Nature (London) 595, 233 (2021).
- G. Semeghini, H. Levine, A. Keesling, S. Ebadi, T. T. Wang, D. Bluvstein, R. Verresen, H. Pichler, M. Kalinowski, R. Samajdar, A. Omran, S. Sachdev, A. Vishwanath, M. Greiner, V. Vuletić, and M. D. Lukin, Probing topological spin liquids on a programmable quantum simulator, Science 374, 1242 (2021).
- A. Bou-Comas S. Jan T., S. Carignano, L. Tagliacozzo, and C. Ramos Marimón, Measuring temporal entropies in experiments, Zenodo (2026), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20155175.