How Noise Turns Order into Chaos on a Quantum Chip ⚡ экспресс
For the first time, dissipative quantum chaos has been experimentally detected on a superconducting quantum processor. By measuring the statistics of energy level spacings (complex spacing ratios), scientists observed a characteristic 'donut-like' pattern for chaotic systems and a sharp peak for integrable (ordered) ones. Increasing circuit depth led to a transition from order to chaos—it turned out that the processor's internal noise itself is a dissipative chaotic process. This discovery turns quantum computers from tools for pure computation into a proving ground for studying nonequilibrium many-body phenomena.
The energy levels of a quantum system can be imagined as people trying to keep their distance. In an orderly regime, they crowd together predictably, but add chaos—and they scatter into a circle, forming a 'donut': a dense ring with an empty center. That's exactly the picture physicists saw for the first time when they ran two programs on a quantum chip—one orderly and one chaotic. Using spectroscopy (listening to the 'notes' of atoms), they measured the distances between levels. In the chaotic case, those levels indeed kept a respectful distance, creating a donut shape. But the main discovery happened when the orderly program was extended: the chip's internal noise—energy leakage causing an increase in entropy—itself turned order into chaos. It turns out that even tiny imperfections, considered a nuisance for computation, make any quantum processor a ready-made laboratory for studying chaos. As noted long ago by Richard Feynman and developed by David Deutsch, quantum computers can model subtle effects that aren't captured by the simple standard model of isolated systems.
🎯 Small energy losses, like in a cup of coffee cooling down or on a currency exchange, can generate chaos—and that's exactly what the quantum chip showed.
🎬 In the series 'Devs,' a quantum computer predicts the future through deterministic chaos; real chips are even more finicky—noise smears everything.