  Quantum simulation elucidates properties of quantum many-body systems by
mapping its Hamiltonian to a better-controlled system. Being less stringent
than a universal quantum computer, noisy small- and intermediate-scale quantum
simulators have successfully demonstrated qualitative behavior such as phase
transition, localization and thermalization which are insensitive to
imperfections in the engineered Hamiltonian. For more complicated features like
quantum information scrambling, higher controllability will be desired to
simulate both the forward and the backward time evolutions and to diagnose
experimental errors, which has only been achieved for discrete gates. Here, we
study the verified scrambling in a 1D spin chain by an analogue superconducting
quantum simulator with the signs and values of individual driving and coupling
terms fully controllable. We measure the temporal and spatial patterns of
out-of-time ordered correlators (OTOC) by engineering opposite Hamiltonians on
two subsystems, with the Hamiltonian mismatch and the decoherence extracted
quantitatively from the scrambling dynamics. Our work demonstrates the
superconducting system as a powerful quantum simulator.
