Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Letter
  • Open Access

Environment-induced transitions in many-body quantum teleportation

Shuyan Zhou1, Pengfei Zhang1,2,*, and Zhenhua Yu3,4,†

  • *Contact author: PengfeiZhang.physics@gmail.com
  • †Contact author: huazhenyu2000@gmail.com

Phys. Rev. Research 8, L012007 – Published 12 January, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/j6j6-b3x8

Abstract

Quantum teleportation is a phenomenon arising from entanglement, decisively distinguishing the classical and quantum worlds. The recent success of many-body quantum teleportation is even more surprising: Although input information is initially dispersed and encoded into the many-body state in a complex way, the teleportation process can refocus this highly nonlocal information at the receiver's end. This success manifests intriguing capability of many-body systems in quantum information processing. Current studies indicate that information scrambling, a generic dynamic process in many-body systems, underlies the effectiveness of many-body quantum teleportation. However, this process is known to undergo a scrambling-dissipation transition in the presence of environments. How environments affect the quantum information processing capability of many-body systems calls for further investigation. In this work, we study many-body quantum teleportation in the presence of environments. We predict two emergent critical points that hallmark the transitions of the teleportation performance from the quantum regime to the classical regime and finally to the no-signal regime as the system-environment coupling, quantified by γ, increases. In the quantum regime, teleportation can outperform its classical counterparts, while in the classical regime, it can be replaced by a classical channel. Our prediction is based on a generic argument harnessing the relationship between many-body quantum teleportation and information scrambling, corroborated by solvable Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (57)

  1. E. Chitambar and G. Gour, Quantum resource theories, Rev. Mod. Phys. 91, 025001 (2019).
  2. C. H. Bennett, G. Brassard, C. Crépeau, R. Jozsa, A. Peres, and W. K. Wootters, Teleporting an unknown quantum state via dual classical and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen channels, Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 1895 (1993).
  3. P. Gao, D. L. Jafferis, and A. C. Wall, Traversable wormholes via a double trace deformation, J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2017) 151.
  4. J. Maldacena, D. Stanford, and Z. Yang, Diving into traversable wormholes, Fortschr. Phys. 65, 1700034 (2017).
  5. P. Gao and D. L. Jafferis, A traversable wormhole teleportation protocol in the SYK model, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2021) 097.
  6. A. R. Brown, H. Gharibyan, S. Leichenauer, H. W. Lin, S. Nezami, G. Salton, L. Susskind, B. Swingle, and M. Walter, Quantum gravity in the lab. I. Teleportation by size and traversable wormholes, PRX Quantum 4, 010320 (2023).
  7. P. Gao and H. Liu, Regenesis and quantum traversable wormholes, J. High Energy Phys. 10 (2019) 048.
  8. S. Nezami, H. W. Lin, A. R. Brown, H. Gharibyan, S. Leichenauer, G. Salton, L. Susskind, B. Swingle, and M. Walter, Quantum gravity in the lab. II. Teleportation by size and traversable wormholes, PRX Quantum 4, 010321 (2023).
  9. T. Schuster, B. Kobrin, P. Gao, I. Cong, E. T. Khabiboulline, N. M. Linke, M. D. Lukin, C. Monroe, B. Yoshida, and N. Y. Yao, Many-body quantum teleportation via operator spreading in the traversable wormhole protocol, Phys. Rev. X 12, 031013 (2022).
  10. D. Jafferis, A. Zlokapa, J. D. Lykken, D. K. Kolchmeyer, S. I. Davis, N. Lauk, H. Neven, and M. Spiropulu, Traversable wormhole dynamics on a quantum processor, Nature (London) 612, 51 (2022).
  11. A. Kitaev, A simple model of quantum holography, Talks at KITP, 2015, http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/entangled15/kitaev/ and http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/entangled15/kitaev2/.
  12. J. Maldacena and D. Stanford, Remarks on the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, Phys. Rev. D 94, 106002 (2016).
  13. A. Kitaev and S. J. Suh, The soft mode in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and its gravity dual, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2018) 183.
  14. J. Maldacena, D. Stanford, and Z. Yang, Conformal symmetry and its breaking in two dimensional nearly anti-de Sitter space, Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2016, 12C104 (2016).
  15. P. Hayden and J. Preskill, Black holes as mirrors: Quantum information in random subsystems, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2007) 120.
  16. Y. Sekino and L. Susskind, Fast scramblers, J. High Energy Phys. 10 (2008) 065.
  17. S. H. Shenker and D. Stanford, Stringy effects in scrambling, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2015) 132.
  18. D. A. Roberts, D. Stanford, and L. Susskind, Localized shocks, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2015) 051.
  19. J. M. Deutsch, Quantum statistical mechanics in a closed system, Phys. Rev. A 43, 2046 (1991).
  20. M. Srednicki, Chaos and quantum thermalization, Phys. Rev. E 50, 888 (1994).
  21. S. Xu and B. Swingle, Scrambling dynamics and out-of-time ordered correlators in quantum many-body systems, PRX Quantum 5, 010201 (2024).
  22. A. Bhattacharyya, L. K. Joshi, and B. Sundar, Quantum information scrambling: From holography to quantum simulators, Eur. Phys. J. C 82, 458 (2022).
  23. Z. Weinstein, S. P. Kelly, J. Marino, and E. Altman, Scrambling transition in a radiative random unitary circuit, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 220404 (2023).
  24. P. Zhang and Z. Yu, Dynamical transition of operator size growth in quantum systems embedded in an environment, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 250401 (2023).
  25. The information scrambling in many-body systems in environments has also been studied in Refs. [23, 24, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57].
  26. P. Saad, S. H. Shenker, and D. Stanford, A semiclassical ramp in SYK and in gravity, arXiv:1806.06840.
  27. C. Sünderhauf, L. Piroli, X.-L. Qi, N. Schuch, and J. I. Cirac, Quantum chaos in the Brownian SYK model with large finite N: OTOCs and tripartite information, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2019) 038.
  28. Y. Gu, A. Kitaev, and P. Zhang, A two-way approach to out-of-time-order correlators, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2022) 133.
  29. Y. Gu and A. Kitaev, On the relation between the magnitude and exponent of OTOCs, J. High Energy Phys. 02 (2019) 075.
  30. W. Israel, Thermo field dynamics of black holes, Phys. Lett. A 57, 107 (1976).
  31. J. M. Maldacena, Eternal black holes in anti-de Sitter, J. High Energy Phys. 04 (2003) 021.
  32. Y. Gu, A. Lucas, and X.-L. Qi, Spread of entanglement in a Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev chain, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2017) 120.
  33. A. Almheiri, R. Mahajan, and J. Maldacena, Islands outside the horizon, arXiv:1910.11077.
  34. See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/j6j6-b3x8 for (1) unitary coupling versus local operations and classical communication, (2) the response function K and operator expansion, (3) fidelity as alternative criteria, (4) details of the Brownian SYK model calculation, and (5) reduced density matrix for finite system size.
  35. Y. Gu, A. Kitaev, and P. Zhang, Wormhole teleportation in large-N quantum mechanics (unpublished).
  36. Here, we also assume the Hamiltonian is symmetric under the permutation between χ1,L and χ2,L.
  37. A. Peres, Separability criterion for density matrices, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 1413 (1996).
  38. M. Horodecki, P. Horodecki, and R. Horodecki, On the necessary and sufficient conditions for separability of mixed quantum states, Phys. Lett. A 223, 1 (1996).
  39. M. B. Plenio, Logarithmic negativity: A full entanglement monotone that is not convex, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 090503 (2005).
  40. G. Vidal and R. F. Werner, Computable measure of entanglement, Phys. Rev. A 65, 032314 (2002).
  41. J. Eisert and M. B. Plenio, A comparison of entanglement measures, J. Mod. Opt. 46, 145 (1999).
  42. X.-L. Qi and A. Streicher, Quantum epidemiology: Operator growth, thermal effects, and SYK, J. High Energy Phys. 08 (2019) 012.
  43. P. Zhang and Y. Gu, Operator size distribution in large N quantum mechanics of Majorana fermions, J. High Energy Phys. 10 (2023) 018.
  44. I. L. Aleiner, L. Faoro, and L. B. Ioffe, Microscopic model of quantum butterfly effect: Out-of-time-order correlators and traveling combustion waves, Ann. Phys. (NY) 375, 378 (2016).
  45. J. Preskill, Quantum computing in the NISQ era and beyond, Quantum 2, 79 (2018).
  46. P. Zhang, Information scrambling and entanglement dynamics of complex Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models, J. High Energy Phys. 04 (2023) 105.
  47. Z. Liu and P. Zhang, Fidelity of wormhole teleportation in finite-qubit systems, J. High Energ. Phys. 07 (2024) 031.
  48. D. Stanford, Z. Yang, and S. Yao, Subleading Weingartens, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2022) 200.
  49. Z. Yang et al. (unpublished).
  50. Y. Chen, H. Zhai, and P. Zhang, Tunable quantum chaos in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model coupled to a thermal bath, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2017) 150.
  51. P. Zhang, Evaporation dynamics of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, Phys. Rev. B 100, 245104 (2019).
  52. A. Almheiri, A. Milekhin, and B. Swingle, Universal constraints on energy flow and SYK thermalization, arXiv:1912.04912.
  53. C. Liu, H. Tang, and H. Zhai, Krylov complexity in open quantum systems, Phys. Rev. Res. 5, 033085 (2023).
  54. A. Bhattacharya, P. Nandy, P. P. Nath, and H. Sahu, Operator growth and Krylov construction in dissipative open quantum systems, J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2022) 081.
  55. T. Schuster and N. Y. Yao, Operator growth in open quantum systems, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 160402 (2023).
  56. B. Bhattacharjee, X. Cao, P. Nandy, and T. Pathak, Operator growth in open quantum systems: Lessons from the dissipative SYK, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2023) 054.
  57. B. Bhattacharjee, P. Nandy, and T. Pathak, Operator dynamics in Lindbladian SYK: A Krylov complexity perspective, J. High Energy Phys. 01 (2024) 094.

Outline

Information

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation