Probing out-of-time-order correlators

Abstract We present a method to probe the Out-of-Time-Order Correlators (OTOCs) of a general system by coupling it to a harmonic oscillator probe. When the system’s degrees of freedom are traced out, the OTOCs imprint themselves on the generalized influence functional of the oscillator. This general...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Soumyadeep Chaudhuri, R. Loganayagam
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SpringerOpen 2019-07-01
Series:Journal of High Energy Physics
Subjects:
Online Access:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP07(2019)006
Description
Summary:Abstract We present a method to probe the Out-of-Time-Order Correlators (OTOCs) of a general system by coupling it to a harmonic oscillator probe. When the system’s degrees of freedom are traced out, the OTOCs imprint themselves on the generalized influence functional of the oscillator. This generalized influence functional leads to a local effective action for the probe whose couplings encode OTOCs of the system. We study the structural features of this effective action and the constraints on the couplings from microscopic unitarity. We comment on how the OTOCs of the system appear in the OTOCs of the probe.
ISSN:1029-8479