On systems of maximal quantum chaos
Abstract A remarkable feature of chaos in many-body quantum systems is the existence of a bound on the quantum Lyapunov exponent. An important question is to understand what is special about maximally chaotic systems which saturate this bound. Here we provide fu...
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Springer Berlin Heidelberg
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/133152.2 |
| _version_ | 1811078530228813824 |
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| author | Liu, Hong |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Theoretical Physics |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Theoretical Physics Liu, Hong |
| author_sort | Liu, Hong |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Abstract
A remarkable feature of chaos in many-body quantum systems is the existence of a bound on the quantum Lyapunov exponent. An important question is to understand what is special about maximally chaotic systems which saturate this bound. Here we provide further evidence for the ‘hydrodynamic’ origin of chaos in such systems, and discuss hallmarks of maximally chaotic systems. We first provide evidence that a hydrodynamic effective field theory of chaos we previously proposed should be understood as a theory of maximally chaotic systems. We then emphasize and make explicit a signature of maximal chaos which was only implicit in prior literature, namely the suppression of exponential growth in commutator squares of generic few-body operators. We provide a general argument for this suppression within our chaos effective field theory, and illustrate it using SYK models and holographic systems. We speculate that this suppression indicates that the nature of operator scrambling in maximally chaotic systems is fundamentally different to scrambling in non-maximally chaotic systems. We also discuss a simplest scenario for the existence of a maximally chaotic regime at sufficiently large distances even for non-maximally chaotic systems. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:01:39Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/133152.2 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:01:39Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/133152.22021-12-10T12:09:47Z On systems of maximal quantum chaos Liu, Hong Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Theoretical Physics Abstract A remarkable feature of chaos in many-body quantum systems is the existence of a bound on the quantum Lyapunov exponent. An important question is to understand what is special about maximally chaotic systems which saturate this bound. Here we provide further evidence for the ‘hydrodynamic’ origin of chaos in such systems, and discuss hallmarks of maximally chaotic systems. We first provide evidence that a hydrodynamic effective field theory of chaos we previously proposed should be understood as a theory of maximally chaotic systems. We then emphasize and make explicit a signature of maximal chaos which was only implicit in prior literature, namely the suppression of exponential growth in commutator squares of generic few-body operators. We provide a general argument for this suppression within our chaos effective field theory, and illustrate it using SYK models and holographic systems. We speculate that this suppression indicates that the nature of operator scrambling in maximally chaotic systems is fundamentally different to scrambling in non-maximally chaotic systems. We also discuss a simplest scenario for the existence of a maximally chaotic regime at sufficiently large distances even for non-maximally chaotic systems. United States. Department of Energy. Office of High Energy Physics (Contract DE-SC0012567) 2021-12-10T12:09:46Z 2021-10-27T16:25:51Z 2021-12-10T12:09:46Z 2021-05-25 2021-05-30T03:19:43Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1029-8479 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/133152.2 Journal of High Energy Physics. 2021 May 25;2021(5):229 PUBLISHER_CC en https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP05(2021)229 Journal of High Energy Physics Creative Commons Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The Author(s) application/octet-stream Springer Berlin Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
| spellingShingle | Liu, Hong On systems of maximal quantum chaos |
| title | On systems of maximal quantum chaos |
| title_full | On systems of maximal quantum chaos |
| title_fullStr | On systems of maximal quantum chaos |
| title_full_unstemmed | On systems of maximal quantum chaos |
| title_short | On systems of maximal quantum chaos |
| title_sort | on systems of maximal quantum chaos |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/133152.2 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT liuhong onsystemsofmaximalquantumchaos |