Continuous percolation in a Hilbert space for a large system of qubits

TL;DR

This paper extends percolation theory to Hilbert spaces of qubits, revealing that traditional percolation transitions are ineffective for large quantum systems due to exponential dimensionality, but the approach may benefit other compact space analyses.

Contribution

It generalizes percolation concepts to Hilbert spaces of qubits and demonstrates the limitations of percolation models for large quantum systems.

Findings

Percolation transition is not suitable for large multiqubit systems.

Exponent in the power-law relation vanishes as qubits increase.

The approach may be useful for other compact metric spaces.

Abstract

The development of percolation theory was historically shaped by its numerous applications in various branches of science, in particular in statistical physics, and was mainly constrained to the case of Euclidean spaces. One of its central concepts, the percolation transition, is defined through the appearance of the infinite cluster, and therefore cannot be used in compact spaces, such as the Hilbert space of an N-qubit system. Here we propose its generalization for the case of a random space covering by hyperspheres, introducing the concept of a ``maximal cluster". Our numerical calculations reproduce the standard power-law relation between the hypersphere radius and the cover density, but show that as the number of qubits increases, the exponent quickly vanishes (i.e., the exponentially increasing dimensionality of the Hilbert space makes its covering by finite-size hyperspheres inefficient). Therefore the percolation transition is not an efficient model for the behavior of multiqubit systems, compared to the random walk model in the Hilbert space. However, our approach to the percolation transition in compact metric spaces may prove useful for its rigorous treatment in other contexts.