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arXiv:1802.05500 · Journal of High Energy Physics

2PI effective action for the SYK model and tensor field theories

Dario Benedetti, Razvan Gurău

Published May 1, 2018• 55 citations
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Abstract

Abstract We discuss the two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective action for the SYK model and for tensor field theories. For the SYK model the 2PI effective action reproduces the bilocal reformulation of the model without using replicas. In general tensor field theories the 2PI formalism is the only way to obtain a bilocal reformulation of the theory, and as such is a precious instrument for the identification of soft modes and for possible holographic interpretations. We compute the 2PI action for several models, and push it up to fourth order in the 1/N expansion for the model proposed by Witten in [1], uncovering a one-loop structure in terms of an auxiliary bilocal action.

DOI
10.1007/jhep05(2018)156

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Abstract We discuss the two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective action for the SYK model and for tensor field theories. For the SYK model the 2PI effective action reproduces the bilocal reformulation of the model without using replicas. In general tensor field theories the 2PI formalism is the only way to obtain a bilocal reformulation of the theory, and as such is a precious instrument for the identification of soft modes and for possible holographic interpretations. We compute the 2PI action for several models, and push it up to fourth order in the 1/N expansion for the model proposed by Witten in [1], uncovering a one-loop structure in terms of an auxiliary bilocal action.
A bstract The physics of the SYK model at low temperatures is dominated by a soft mode governed by the Schwarzian action. In [1] the linearised action was derived from the soft mode contribution to the four-point function, and physical arguments were presented for its nonlinear completion to the Schwarzian. In this paper, we give two derivations of the full nonlinear effective action in the large p limit, where p is the number of fermions in the interaction terms of the Hamiltonian. The first derivation uses that the collective field action of the large- p SYK model is Liouville theory with a non-conformal boundary condition that we study in conformal perturbation theory. This derivation can be viewed as an explicit version of the renormalisation group argument for the nonlinear soft mode action in [2]. The second derivation uses an Ansatz for how the soft mode embeds into the microscopic configuration space of the collective fields. We generalise our results for the large- p SYK chain and obtain a “Schwarzian chain” effective action for it. These derivations showcase that the large- p SYK model is a rare system, in which there is sufficient control over the microscopic dynamics, so that an effective description can be derived for it without the need for extra assumptions or matching (in the effective field theory sense).
The two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective action theories are employed to study the strongly fluctuating electron systems, under the formalism of the two-dimensional Hubbard model. We obtain the corresponding quantum 2PI effective action after the original classic action of the Hubbard model is bosonized. In our actual calculations, the 2PI effective action is expanded to three loops, in which the leading order (LO) and next-to-leading order (NLO) quantum fluctuations are included. Numerical calculations indicate that the NLO fluctuations should not be neglected when the Coulomb on-site repulsion energy is larger than two times the nearest-neighbor hopping energy.
The SYK model spectral form factor exhibits absence of information loss in the form of a ramp and a plateau that are typical of random matrix theory. In a large N collective fields description, the ramp was reproduced by Saad, Shenker and Stanford by a connected component of the analytically continued thermal partition function two point correlator. The existence of an \emph{off shell} connected component for the real time partition function is a consequence of disorder averaging over a statistical ensemble of two replica systems. In particular, the ramp arises from a family of vanishing action replica-non-diagonal conformal saddles. We provide a derivation of the soft modes effective action for fluctuations around the ramp conformal saddles, by adapting to the two replica system a method used by Kitaev and Suh in regular SYK.
We propose a nonperturbative renormalization-group (NPRG) approach to fermion systems in the two-particle-irreducible (2PI) effective action formalism, based on an exact RG equation for the Luttinger-Ward functional. This approach enables us to describe phases with spontaneously broken symmetries while satisfying the Mermin-Wagner theorem. We show that it is possible to choose the Hartree-Fock random phase approximation theory as initial condition of the RG flow and argue that the 2PI-NPRG is not restricted to the weak-coupling limit. An expansion of the Luttinger-Ward functional about the minimum of the 2PI effective action including only the two-particle 2PI vertex leads to nontrivial RG equations where interactions between fermions and collective excitations naturally emerge.
Approximations based on two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective actions (also known as Φ-derivable, Cornwall–Jackiw–Tomboulis or Luttinger–Ward functionals depending on context) have been widely used in condensed matter and non-equilibrium quantum/statistical field theory because this formalism gives a robust, self-consistent, non-perturbative and systematically improvable approach which avoids problems with secular time evolution. The strengths of 2PI approximations are often described in terms of a selective resummation of Feynman diagrams to infinite order. However, the Feynman diagram series is asymptotic and summation is at best a dangerous procedure. Here we show that, at least in the context of a toy model where exact results are available, the true strength of 2PI approximations derives from their self-consistency rather than any resummation. This self-consistency allows truncated 2PI approximations to capture the branch points of physical amplitudes where adjustments of coupling constants can trigger an instability of the vacuum. This, in effect, turns Dyson's argument for the failure of perturbation theory on its head. As a result we find that 2PI approximations perform better than Padé approximation and are competitive with Borel–Padé resummation. Finally, we introduce a hybrid 2PI–Padé method.
We study (nearly) AdS/CFT holography within the context of the Sachdev-Ye- Kitaev (SYK) model. We present a systematic procedure to extract the dynamics of the low energy Schwarzian mode in SYK type models with a single energy scale J and emergent reparametrization symmetry in the infrared within the framework of perturbation theory. We develop a systematic approach using Feynman diagrams in bilocal theory to obtain a formal expression for the enhanced and O(1) corrections to the bilocal propagator and apply this general technique to large q SYK. We show that the Schwarzian theory describes a sector of a general class of two dimensional CFTs using conformal bootstrap techniques. We also provide a gravitational interpretation of this fact by showing that the dynamics in the near horizon throat of a specific class of BTZ black holes is described very well by Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity which gives rise to the Schwarzian action. We study the highly nontrivial conformal matter spectrum of the SYK model at arbitrary q. We provide a three dimensional bulk interpretation and carry out Kaluza-Klein (KK) reduction to reproduce the SYK spectrum and more significantly, the conformal bilocal propagator. We provide an interpretation of the two dimensional dual spacetime of the conformal sector of the SYK model using techniques from bilocal holography. We present a resolution of a conundrum about the signature of the dual spacetime using nonlocal integral transformations.