Information Propagation in Rydberg Arrays via Analog OTOC Calculations

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 6 Apr 2026] Information Propagation in Rydberg Arrays via Analog OTOC Calculations Goksu Can Toga, Siva Darbha, Ermal Rrapaj, Pedro L. S. Lopes, Alexander F. Kemper Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) are the main tool for probing quantum chaos and scrambling, and have become crucial probes in many areas of quantum computing. However, the measurement of OTOCs is difficult to implement on analog quantum computers due to the requirement of backward time evolution. In this paper, we develop and implement a randomized measurement protocol to compute OTOCs on Aquila by QuEra Computing. Unlike traditional methods that require backward time evolution, our approach utilizes a sequence of global randomized quenches that approximates the unitary 2-design properties necessary for extracting infinite-temperature OTOCs from statistical correlations. We demonstrate the protocol's success by explicitly observing the lightcone of information propagation in 1D Rydberg chains, and compare hardware results to both state-vector simulations and matrix product state (MPS) tensor network calculations. This work establishes the first demonstration of fully analog randomized OTOC measurements in neutral-atom simulators, providing a scalable pathway to probe quantum chaos in complex many-body systems. Comments: 10 pages, 10 figures Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.05038 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.05038v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.05038 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Goksu Can Toga [view email] [v1] Mon, 6 Apr 2026 18:00:05 UTC (9,701 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)