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arXiv:1707.09589 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Dispersive Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model: Band structure and quantum chaos

Pengfei Zhang

Published Nov 21, 2017• 77 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model is a concrete model for a non-Fermi liquid with maximally chaotic behavior in $(0+1)$ dimensions. In order to gain some insights into real materials in higher dimensions where fermions could hop between different sites, here we consider coupling a SYK lattice by constant hopping. We call this the dispersive SYK model. Focusing on $(1+1)$-dimensional homogeneous hopping, by either tuning the temperature or the relative strength of the random interaction (hopping) and constant hopping, we find a crossover between a dispersive metal to an incoherent metal, where the dynamic exponent $z$ changes from 1 to $\ensuremath{\infty}$. We study the crossover by calculating the spectral function, charge density correlator, and the Lyapunov exponent. We further find the Lyapunov exponent becomes larger when the chemical potential is tuned to approach a van Hove singularity because of the large density of states near the Fermi surface. The effect of the topological nontrivial bands is also discussed.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.96.205138

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The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model is a concrete model for a non-Fermi liquid with maximally chaotic behavior in (0+1)(0+1)(0+1) dimensions. In order to gain some insights into real materials in higher dimensions where fermions could hop between different sites, here we consider coupling a SYK lattice by constant hopping. We call this the dispersive SYK model. Focusing on (1+1)(1+1)(1+1)-dimensional homogeneous hopping, by either tuning the temperature or the relative strength of the random interaction (hopping) and constant hopping, we find a crossover between a dispersive metal to an incoherent metal, where the dynamic exponent zzz changes from 1 to \ensuremath∞\ensuremath{\infty}\ensuremath∞. We study the crossover by calculating the spectral function, charge density correlator, and the Lyapunov exponent. We further find the Lyapunov exponent becomes larger when the chemical potential is tuned to approach a van Hove singularity because of the large density of states near the Fermi surface. The effect of the topological nontrivial bands is also discussed.
The complex Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, featuring fermions with all-to-all interactions, serves as a dual paradigm for understanding non-Fermi liquid behavior and the holographic nature of charged black holes. Two defining characteristics of the standard SYK model are its maximal chaos (Lyapunov exponent λL=2πTλ_{\mathrm{L}}=2πTλL​=2πT at temperature TTT), and its finite zero-temperature residual entropy. While previous studies have largely focused on couplings drawn from a zero-mean Gaussian distribution, we investigate a generalized model with a finite mean-to-standard-deviation ratio, g≡J0/δJg\equiv J_{0}/δJg≡J0​/δJ of the coupling distribution in order to get deeper insight into the evolution of chaos. We find that increasing ggg yields the following effects: (i) The system remains a fast scrambler with λL=A Tλ_{\mathrm{L}}=A~TλL​=A T, but with a suppressed coefficient A<2πA<2πA<2π. (ii) In the limit g→∞g\to \inftyg→∞, out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) no longer exhibit exponential growth with λL≃0λ_{\mathrm{L}}\simeq 0λL​≃0. (iii) The spectral correlations indicative of late-time chaos maintain Wigner-Dyson level spacing statistics for all values of ggg. (iv) The system preserves a finite residual entropy, albeit with reduced magnitude, for all ggg values. We conclude that in this generalized SYK model, there is a chaotic to non-chaotic crossover. Moreover different measures of chaos decouple, demonstrating that the presence of finite residual entropy does not strictly imply maximal chaos.
Prominent systems like the high-T_{c} cuprates and heavy fermions display intriguing features going beyond the quasiparticle description. The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model describes a (0+1)D quantum cluster with random all-to-all four-fermion interactions among N fermion modes which becomes exactly solvable as N→∞, exhibiting a zero-dimensional non-Fermi-liquid with emergent conformal symmetry and complete absence of quasiparticles. Here we study a lattice of complex-fermion SYK dots with random intersite quadratic hopping. Combining the imaginary time path integral with real time path integral formulation, we obtain a heavy Fermi liquid to incoherent metal crossover in full detail, including thermodynamics, low temperature Landau quasiparticle interactions, and both electrical and thermal conductivity at all scales. We find linear in temperature resistivity in the incoherent regime, and a Lorentz ratio L≡(κρ/T) varies between two universal values as a function of temperature. Our work exemplifies an analytically controlled study of a strongly correlated metal.
The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model describes Majorana fermions with random interaction, which displays many interesting properties such as non-Fermi liquid behavior, quantum chaos, emergent conformal symmetry and holographic duality. Here we consider a SYK model or a chain of SYK models with N Majorana fermion modes coupled to another SYK model with N 2 Majorana fermion modes, in which the latter has many more degrees of freedom and plays the role as a thermal bath. For a single SYK model coupled to the thermal bath, we show that although the Lyapunov exponent is still proportional to temperature, it monotonically decreases from 2π/β (β = 1/(k B T), T is temperature) to zero as the coupling strength to the thermal bath increases. For a chain of SYK models, when they are uniformly coupled to the thermal bath, we show that the butterfly velocity displays a crossover from a T \sqrt{T} T​ -dependence at relatively high temperature to a linear T-dependence at low temperature, with the crossover temperature also controlled by the coupling strength to the thermal bath. If only the end of the SYK chain is coupled to the thermal bath, the model can introduce a spatial dependence of both the Lyapunov exponent and the butterfly velocity. Our models provide canonical examples for the study of thermalization within chaotic models.
We analyze the relation between quantum chaotic behavior and phase transitions of the Yukawa--Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model as a function of filling and temperature, which describes random Yukawa interactions between NNN complex fermions and MMM bosons in zero spatial dimensions for both the non-Fermi liquid and insulating states at finite temperature and chemical potential. We solve the ladder equations for the out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) for both bosons and fermions. Despite the appearance of the chemical potential in the Hamiltonian, which explicitly introduces an additional energy scale, the OTOCs for the fermions and bosons in the non-Fermi liquid state turn out to be unaffected, and the Lyapunov exponents that diagnose chaos remain maximal. As the chemical potential increases, the system is known to experience a first-order transition from a critical phase to a gapped insulating phase. We postulate that the boundary of the region in parameter space where each phase is (meta)stable coincides with the curve on which the Lyapunov exponent is maximal. By calculating the exponent in the insulating phase and comparing to numerical results on the boundaries of stability, we show that this is plausible.
We study a two-band dispersive Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model in 1+11+11+1 dimension. We suggest a model that describes a semimetal with quadratic dispersion at half filling. We compute the Green's function at the saddle point using a combination of analytical and numerical methods. Employing a scaling symmetry of the Schwinger-Dyson equations that becomes transparent in the strongly dispersive limit, we show that the exact solution of the problem yields a distinct type of non-Fermi liquid with sublinear $\ensuremath{\rho}\ensuremath{\propto}{T}^{2/5}$ temperature dependence of the resistivity. A scaling analysis indicates that this state corresponds to the fixed point of the dispersive SYK model for a quadratic band touching semimetal.
The tractability of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model at the large NNN limit makes it ideal to theoretically study its chaotic non-Fermi liquid behavior and holographic duality properties. We show that the complex SYK Hamiltonian emerges from a system of spinless itinerant fermionic atoms in an optical kagome lattice with a strong disorder. We discuss the regimes supporting flat band spectra in a kagome lattice, where the system can be nondispersive. Random interaction between nondispersive fermions is induced due to randomly distributed immobile impurities in the optical lattice, that impede the presence of itinerant fermions at their locations. We show that the proposed setup represents a maximally chaotic system and is a reliable experimental platform to realize the SYK model and study its exotic behavior. We show that the velocity distribution of the released fermions is a sensitive probe of the many-body Wigner-Dyson spectral density of states while the averaged many-body Loschmidt echo scheme can measure two-point out-of-time-ordered correlation functions of the SYK system.