Statistical bounds on the dynamical production of entanglement

We present a random-matrix analysis of the entangling power of a unitary operator as a function of the number of times it is iterated. We consider unitaries belonging to the circular ensembles of random matrices [the circular unitary (CUE) or circular orthogonal ensemble] applied to random (real or complex) nonentangled states. We verify numerically that the average entangling power is a monotonically decreasing function of time. The same behavior is observed for the “operator entanglement”—an alternative measure of the entangling strength of a unitary operator. On the analytical side we calculate the CUE operator entanglement and asymptotic values for the entangling power. We also provide a theoretical explanation of the time dependence in the CUE cases.