In many-body quantum systems with spatially local interactions, quantum information propagates with a finite velocity, reminiscent of the “light cone” of relativity. In systems with long-range interactions which decay with distance $r$ as $1/r^{\alpha }$, however, there are multiple light cones which control different information theoretic tasks. We show an optimal (up to logarithms) “Frobenius light cone” obeying $t\sim r^{min(\alpha -1,1)}$ for $\alpha >1$ in one-dimensional power-law interacting systems with finite local dimension: this controls, among other physical properties, the butterfly velocity characterizing many-body chaos and operator growth. We construct an explicit random Hamiltonian protocol that saturates the bound and settles the optimal Frobenius light cone in one dimension. We partially extend our constraints on the Frobenius light cone to a several operator $p$-norms, and show that Lieb-Robinson bounds can be saturated in at most an exponentially small $e^{-\mathrm{\Omega }\left(r\right)}$ fraction of the many-body Hilbert space.

• Received 28 May 2021
• Revised 17 October 2021
• Accepted 26 November 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.104.062420