Evolution of circuit complexity in a harmonic chain under multiple quenches

Kuntal Pal, Kunal Pal, Ankit Gill, Tapobrata Sarkar

Published 2022-06-07Version 1

We study Nielsen's circuit complexity in a periodic harmonic oscillator chain, under single and multiple quenches. In a multiple quench scenario, it is shown that the complexity shows remarkably different behaviour compared to the other information theoretic measures, such as the entanglement entropy. In particular, after two successive quenches, when the frequency returns to its initial value, there is a lower limit of complexity, which cannot be made to approach zero. Further, we show that by applying a large number of successive quenches, the complexity of the time evolved state can be increased to a high value, which is not possible by applying a single quench. This model also exhibits the interesting phenomenon of crossover of complexities between two successive quenches performed at different times.