Lyapunov exponents, a purely classical quantity, play an important role in the evolution of quantum chaotic systems in the semiclassical limit. We conjecture the existence of an upper bound on the Lyapunov exponents that contribute to the quantum motion, namely, even in the semiclassical limit only a limited range of Lyapunov exponents, bounded from above, are important for the quantum evolution. This is a universal feature in any quantum system or quantum field theory, including those with a gravity dual. It has its origin in the finite size of the Hilbert space that is available to an initial quasi-classical configuration. An upper bound also exists in the limit of an infinite Hilbert space provided that the system is in contact with an environment, for instance a thermal bath. An important consequence of this result is a universal quantum bound on the maximum growth rate of the entanglement entropy at zero and finite temperature.
The Loschmidt echo (LE) is a magnitude that measures the sensitivity of quantum dynamics to perturbations in the Hamiltonian. For a certain regime of the parameters, the LE decays exponentially with a rate given by the Lyapunov exponent of the underlying classically chaotic system. We develop a semiclassical theory, supported by numerical results in a Lorentz gas model, which allows us to establish and characterize the universality of this Lyapunov regime. In particular, the universality is evidenced by the semiclassical limit of the de Broglie wavelength going to zero, the behavior for times longer than Ehrenfest time, the insensitivity with respect to the form of the perturbation, and the behavior of individual (nonaveraged) initial conditions. Finally, by elaborating a semiclassical approximation to the Wigner function, we are able to distinguish between classical and quantum origin for the different terms of the LE. This approach renders an understanding for the persistence of the Lyapunov regime after the Ehrenfest time, as well as a reinterpretation of our results in terms of the quantum-classical transition.
Out-of-Time-Ordered Commutators (OTOCs), representing a key diagnostic for scrambling as a facet of short-time quantum chaos, have attracted wide-ranging interest, from many-body physics to quantum gravity. By means of a suitable form of the Wigner-Moyal expansion, and invoking ensemble equivalence in statistical physics, we provide a consistent approach to the growth rate of the OTOC for many-body systems with chaotic classical limit where both the classical Lyapunov exponent and the quantum nature of the density of states enter. Applying this construction to quantized high-dimensional hyperbolic motion, i.e., a quantum chaotic system that exhibits gravity-like correlation functions in the late-time regime, we compute the OTOC growth rate
Λ as a function of the number of degrees of freedom,
f, and inverse temperature,
β.
We show that the scaled growth rate,
Λ/f, can be described by a universal function of
fβ and displays a cross-over from classical to quantum behavior as we increase
f and/or lower the temperature. In the deep quantum regime of infinite
f, we find maximally fast scrambling in the sense of the Maldacena-Shenker-Stanford bound on chaos. This elucidates the non-perturbative mechanism underlying the saturation of the bound via quantum contributions to the mean density of states, and it provides further support for this dynamical system as a dual to two-dimensional quantum gravity. In this way, we present first evidence of maximally fast scrambling in a quantum chaotic system with a well-defined classical Hamiltonian limit, without invoking any external mechanism such as (disorder) averaging.
We introduce a simple quantum generalization of the spectrum of classical Lyapunov exponents. We apply it to the SYK and XXZ models, and study the Lyapunov growth and entropy production. Our numerical results suggest that a black hole is not just the fastest scrambler, but also the fastest entropy generator. We also study the statistical features of the quantum Lyapunov spectrum and find universal random matrix behavior, which resembles the recently-found universality in classical chaos. The random matrix behavior is lost when the system is deformed away from chaos, towards integrability or a many-body localized phase. We propose that quantum systems holographically dual to gravity satisfy this universality in a strong form. We further argue that the quantum Lyapunov spectrum contains important additional information beyond the largest Lyapunov exponent and hence provides us with a better characterization of chaos in quantum systems.
Chaos in classical systems can be characterized by Lyapunov exponents that measure the exponential divergence of nearby trajectories, but directly extending this framework to quantum mechanics has been a persistent challenge. The wavelike nature of quantum states and the non-commutative geometry of quantum phase space obstruct a straightforward generalization of classical chaos theory. Here we develop a rigorous approach to quantum chaos by leveraging quantum optimal transport theory, which provides the missing geometric foundation for measuring distances between extended quantum distributions. We define quantum Lyapunov exponents that naturally avoid divergences encountered when naïvely generalizing classical exponents, and show that in the semiclassical limit they recover the classical global expansion rate, and hence the usual maximal Lyapunov exponent when they coincide. Our framework provides a tight connection between the divergence of classical trajectories and semiclassical phase space evolution, and additionally clarifies the role of out-of-time-order correlators as diagnostics of quantum chaos. These results establish quantum optimal transport as a unifying mathematical foundation for quantum chaos theory, providing new tools to characterize dynamical behavior across the full range of quantum dynamics from simple few-body models to complex many-body systems.
Out-of-Time-Ordered Commutators (OTOCs), representing a key diagnostic for scrambling as a facet of short-time quantum chaos, have attracted wide-ranging interest, from many-body physics to quantum gravity. By means of a suitable form of the Wigner-Moyal expansion, and invoking ensemble equivalence in statistical physics, we provide a consistent approach to the growth rate of the OTOC for many-body systems with chaotic classical limit where both the classical Lyapunov exponent and the quantum nature of the density of states enter. Applying this construction to quantized high-dimensional hyperbolic motion, i.e., a quantum chaotic system that exhibits gravity-like correlation functions in the late-time regime, we compute the OTOC growth rate Λ as a function of the number of degrees of freedom, f, and inverse temperature, β. We show that the scaled growth rate, Λ/f, can be described by a universal function of fβ and displays a cross-over from classical to quantum behavior as we increase f and/or lower the temperature. In the deep quantum regime of infinite f, we find maximally fast scrambling in the sense of the Maldacena-Shenker-Stanford bound on chaos. This elucidates the non-perturbative mechanism underlying the saturation of the bound via quantum contributions to the mean density of states, and it provides further support for this dynamical system as a dual to two-dimensional quantum gravity. In this way, we present first evidence of maximally fast scrambling in a quantum chaotic system with a well-defined classical Hamiltonian limit, without invoking any external mechanism such as (disorder) averaging.
Abstract We introduce a simple quantum generalization of the spectrum of classical Lyapunov exponents. We apply it to the SYK and XXZ models, and study the Lyapunov growth and entropy production. Our numerical results suggest that a black hole is not just the fastest scrambler, but also the fastest entropy generator. We also study the statistical features of the quantum Lyapunov spectrum and find universal random matrix behavior, which resembles the recently-found universality in classical chaos. The random matrix behavior is lost when the system is deformed away from chaos, towards integrability or a many-body localized phase. We propose that quantum systems holographically dual to gravity satisfy this universality in a strong form. We further argue that the quantum Lyapunov spectrum contains important additional information beyond the largest Lyapunov exponent and hence provides us with a better characterization of chaos in quantum systems.