A class of tensor models were recently outlined as potentially calculable examples of holography: their perturbative large-N behavior is similar to the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, but they are fully quantum mechanical (in the sense that there is no quenched disorder averaging). These facts make them intriguing tentative models for quantum black holes. In this note, we explicitly diagonalize the simplest non-trivial Gurau-Witten tensor model and study its spectral and late-time properties. We find parallels to (a single sample of) SYK where some of these features were recently attributed to random matrix behavior and quantum chaos. In particular, the spectral form factor exhibits a dip-ramp-plateau structure after a running time average, in qualitative agreement with SYK. But we also observe that even though the spectrum has a unique ground state, it has a huge (quasi-?)degeneracy of intermediate energy states, not seen in SYK. If one ignores the delta function due to the degeneracies however, there is level repulsion in the unfolded spacing distribution hinting chaos. Furthermore, there are gaps in the spectrum. The system also has a spectral mirror symmetry which we trace back to the presence of a unitary operator with which the Hamiltonian anticommutes. We use it to argue that to the extent that the model exhibits random matrix behavior, it is controlled not by the Dyson ensembles, but by the BDI (chiral orthogonal) class in the Altland-Zirnbauer classification.
A class of tensor models were recently outlined as potentially calculable examples of holography: their perturbative large-N behavior is similar to the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, but they are fully quantum mechanical (in the sense that there is no quenched disorder averaging). These facts make them intriguing tentative models for quantum black holes. In this note, we explicitly diagonalize the simplest non-trivial Gurau-Witten tensor model and study its spectral and late-time properties. We find parallels to (a single sample of) SYK where some of these features were recently attributed to random matrix behavior and quantum chaos. In particular, the spectral form factor exhibits a dip-ramp-plateau structure after a running time average, in qualitative agreement with SYK. But we also observe that even though the spectrum has a unique ground state, it has a huge (quasi-?)degeneracy of intermediate energy states, not seen in SYK. If one ignores the delta function due to the degeneracies however, there is level repulsion in the unfolded spacing distribution hinting chaos. Furthermore, there are gaps in the spectrum. The system also has a spectral mirror symmetry which we trace back to the presence of a unitary operator with which the Hamiltonian anticommutes. We use it to argue that to the extent that the model exhibits random matrix behavior, it is controlled not by the Dyson ensembles, but by the BDI (chiral orthogonal) class in the Altland-Zirnbauer classification.
A class of tensor models were recently outlined as potentially calculable examples of holography: their perturbative large-N behavior is similar to the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, but they are fully quantum mechanical (in the sense that there is no quenched disorder averaging). These facts make them intriguing tentative models for quantum black holes. In this note, we explicitly diagonalize the simplest non-trivial Gurau-Witten tensor model and study its spectral and late-time properties. We find parallels to (a single sample of) SYK where some of these features were recently attributed to random matrix behavior and quantum chaos. In particular, the spectral form factor exhibits a dip-ramp plateau structure after a running time average, in qualitative agreement with SYK. But we also observe that even though the spectrum has a unique ground state, it has a huge (quasi-?)degeneracy of intermediate energy states, not seen in SYK. If one ignores the delta function due to the degeneracies however, there is level repulsion in the unfolded spacing distribution hinting chaos. Furthermore, there are gaps in the spectrum. The system also has a spectral mirror symmetry which we trace back to the presence of a unitary operator with which the Hamiltonian anticommutes. We use it to argue that to the extent that the model exhibits random matrix behavior, it is controlled not by the Dyson ensembles, but by the BDI (chiral orthogonal) class in the Altland-Zirnbauer classification.
The random matrix theory (RMT) can be used to classify both topological phases of matter and quantum chaos. We develop a systematic and transformative RMT to classify the quantum chaos in the colored Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model first introduced by Gross and Rosenhaus. Here we focus on the two-colored case and the four-colored case with a balanced number of Majorana fermions N. By identifying the maximal symmetries, the independent parity conservation sectors, the minimum (irreducible) Hilbert space, and especially the relevant antiunitary and unitary operators, we show that the color degrees of freedom lead to novel quantum chaotic behaviors. When N is odd, different symmetry operators need to be constructed to make the classifications complete. The two-colored case only shows the threefold Wigner-Dyson way, and the four-colored case shows the tenfold generalized Wigner-Dyson way which may also have nontrivial edge exponents. We also study two- and four-colored hybrid SYK models, which display many salient quantum chaotic features hidden in the corresponding pure SYK models. These features motivate us to develop a systematic RMT to study the energy level statistics of two or four uncorrelated random matrix ensembles. The exact diagonalizations are performed to study both the bulk energy level statistics and the edge exponents and to find excellent agreement with our exact maximal symmetry classifications. Our complete and systematic methods can be easily extended to study the generic imbalanced cases. They may be transferred to the classifications of colored tensor models, quantum chromodynamics with pairings across different colors, quantum black holes, and interacting symmetry protected (or enriched) topological phases.
Black holes are conjectured to be maximally chaotic, with their quantum spectra expected to exhibit universal random-matrix correlations. This expectation, however, has so far rested largely on holographic descriptions or on many-body models in which randomness is introduced rather than derived from the microscopic degrees of freedom of the horizon itself. In the horizon matrix model, the fuzzy sphere supports highly degenerate parton states whose multiplicity accounts for the black-hole entropy. We show that quantum fluctuations of the horizon geometry lift this degeneracy and generate an ensemble of one-parton Hamiltonians. Both the operator structure and the rank-dependent covariance of this ensemble are determined by the microscopic model, rather than fixed by quenched couplings.
Despite this structured covariance, the resulting spectra exhibit GOE, GUE, and GSE statistics dictated by their antiunitary symmetry classes, with the adjacent-gap statistic becoming increasingly self-averaging with matrix size. The model also realizes the universal Pandey--Mehta orthogonal-to-unitary crossover, with the crossover scale determined by the microscopic geometric covariance. A rank-resolved variance analysis shows that the fluctuation strength remains broadly distributed across tensor ranks up to the microscopic cutoff, providing a microscopic basis for the observed Wigner--Dyson universality and effectively nonlocal dynamics. The antiunitary symmetry acts directly on the fuzzy-sphere geometry, so the Dyson class of a conditional Hamiltonian is determined by the antiunitary symmetry of the underlying quantum geometry. This provides a microscopic counterpart of the Stanford--Witten relation between geometry and random-matrix universality in JT gravity. These results establish a microscopic route from quantum horizon geometry to black-hole spectral chaos.
The strongly coupled D1-D5 conformal field theory is a microscopic model of black holes which is expected to have chaotic dynamics. Here, we study the weak coupling limit of the theory where it is integrable rather than chaotic. In this limit, the operators creating microstates of the lowest mass black hole are known exactly. We consider the time-ordered two-point function of light probes in these microstates, normalized by the same two-point function in vacuum. These correlators display a universal early-time decay followed by late-time sporadic behavior. To find a prescription for temporal coarse-graining of these late fluctuations we appeal to random matrix theory, where we show that a progressive time-average smooths the spectral form factor (a proxy for the 2-point function) in a typical draw of a random matrix. This coarse-grained quantity reproduces the matrix ensemble average to a good approximation. Employing this coarse-graining in the D1-D5 system, we find that the early-time decay is followed by a dip, a ramp and a plateau, in remarkable qualitative agreement with recent studies of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. We study the timescales involved, comment on similarities and differences between our integrable model and the chaotic SYK model, and suggest ways to extend our results away from the integrable limit.
We study a sparse Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model with N Majoranas where only $\ensuremath{\sim}kN$ independent matrix elements are nonzero. We identify a minimum $k\ensuremath{\gtrsim}1$ for quantum chaos to occur by a level statistics analysis. The spectral density in this region, and for a larger k, is still given by the Schwarzian prediction of the dense SYK model, though with renormalized parameters. Similar results are obtained for a beyond linear scaling with N of the number of nonzero matrix elements. This is a strong indication that this is the minimum connectivity for the sparse SYK model to still have a quantum gravity dual. We also find an intriguing exact relation between the leading correction to moments of the spectral density due to sparsity and the leading 1/d correction of Parisi's U(1) lattice gauge theory in a d-dimensional hypercube. In the $k\ensuremath{\rightarrow}1$ limit, different disorder realizations of the sparse SYK model show emergent random matrix statistics that for fixed N can be in any universality class of the tenfold way. The agreement with random matrix statistics is restricted to short-range correlations, no more than a few level spacings, in particular in the tail of the spectrum. In addition, emergent discrete global symmetries in most of the disorder realizations for k slightly below one give rise to 2m-fold degenerate spectra, with m being a positive integer. For k=3/4, we observe a large number of such emergent global symmetries with a maximum 28-fold degenerate spectra for N=26.
Recently, the physics of many-body quantum chaotic systems close to their ground states has come under intensified scrutiny. Such studies are motivated by the emergence of model systems exhibiting chaotic fluctuations throughout the entire spectrum [the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model being a renowned representative] as well as by the physics of holographic principles, which likewise unfold close to ground states. Interpreting the edge of the spectrum as a quantum critical point, here we combine a wide range of analytical and numerical methods to the identification and comprehensive description of two different universality classes: the near edge physics of “sparse” and the near edge of “dense” chaotic systems. The distinction lies in the ratio between the number of a system's random parameters and its Hilbert space dimension, which is exponentially small or algebraically small in the sparse and dense case, respectively. Notable representatives of the two classes are generic chaotic many-body models (sparse) and invariant random matrix ensembles or chaotic gravitational systems (dense). While the two families share identical spectral correlations at energy scales comparable to the level spacing, the density of states and its fluctuations near the edge are different. Considering the SYK model as a representative of the sparse class, we apply a combination of field theory and exact diagonalization to a detailed discussion of its edge spectrum. Conversely, Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity is our reference model for the dense class, where an analysis of the gravitational path integral and random matrix theory reveal universal differences to the sparse class, whose implications for the construction of holographic principles we discuss. Published by the American Physical Society 2024