Kardar-Parisi-Zhang superdiffusion in chaotic quantum circuits

Abstract

We construct a family of chaotic brickwork quantum circuits exhibiting superdiffusive transport with dynamical exponent $z=3/2$ in the full Kardar--Parisi--Zhang (KPZ) universality class. This is enabled by the equilibrium current associated with a inhomogeneous conserved density having a nontrivial dependence on the chemical potential. Using nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics, we derive the propagation velocity, broadening scale, and universal scaling form of the charge correlation function from microscopic equilibrium properties. Tensor-network simulations of a two-site spin-$1$ (qutrit) circuit reproduce these parameter-free predictions, including the full stationary KPZ profile. We further construct a three-site spin-$\frac12$ (qubit) circuit, where transport varies from diffusive to superdiffusive with the chemical potential, while long-lived coherent quasiparticles delay the convergence of the profile to the KPZ scaling form. Our results establish that KPZ superdiffusion in quantum systems is not restricted to fine-tuned integrable models.