Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1808.02054 · Physical Review Letters

Temperature Dependence of the Butterfly Effect in a Classical Many-Body System

Thomas Bilitewski, Subhro Bhattacharjee, Roderich Moessner

Published Dec 18, 2018• 54 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the chaotic dynamics in a classical many-body system of interacting spins on the kagome lattice. We characterize many-body chaos via the butterfly effect as captured by an appropriate out-of-time-ordered commutator. Due to the emergence of a spin-liquid phase, the chaotic dynamics extends all the way to zero temperature. We thus determine the full temperature dependence of two complementary aspects of the butterfly effect: the Lyapunov exponent, $\ensuremath{\mu}$, and the butterfly speed, ${v}_{b}$, and study their interrelations with usual measures of spin dynamics such as the spin-diffusion constant, $D$, and spin-autocorrelation time, $\ensuremath{\tau}$. We find that they all exhibit power-law behavior at low temperature, consistent with scaling of the form $D\ensuremath{\sim}{v}_{b}^{2}/\ensuremath{\mu}$ and ${\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}\ensuremath{\sim}T$. The vanishing of $\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{\sim}{T}^{0.48}$ is parametrically slower than that of the corresponding quantum bound, $\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{\sim}T$, raising interesting questions regarding the semiclassical limit of such spin systems.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.121.250602

Related papers

Classical many-body chaos with and without quasiparticles

Thomas Bilitewski, Subhro Bhattacharjee, Roderich Moessner

We study correlations, transport, and chaos in a Heisenberg magnet as a classical model many-body system. By varying temperature and dimensionality, we can tune between settings with and without symmetry breaking and accompanying collective modes or quasiparticles (spin waves) which in the limit of low temperatures become increasingly long-lived. Changing the sign of the exchange interaction from a ferro- to an antiferromagnetic one varies the spin-wave spectrum, and hence the low-energy spectral density. We analyze both conventional and out-of-time-ordered spin correlators (decorrelators) to track the spreading of a spatiotemporally localized perturbation---the wing beat of the butterfly---as well as transport coefficients and Lyapunov exponents. We identify a number of qualitatively different regimes. Trivially, at $T=0$, there is no dynamics at all. In the limit of low temperature, $T={0}^{+}$, integrability emerges, with infinitely long-lived magnons; here the wave packet created by the perturbation propagates ballistically, yielding a light cone at the spin-wave velocity which thus subsumes the butterfly velocity; inside the light cone, a pattern characteristic of the free spin-wave spectrum is visible at short times. On top of this, residual interactions (nonlinearities in the equations of motion) lead to spin-wave lifetimes which, while divergent in this limit, remain finite at any nonzero $T$. At the longest times, this leads to a standard chaotic regime; for this regime, we show that the Lyapunov exponent is simply proportional to the (inverse) spin-wave lifetime. Visibly strikingly, between this and the short-time integrable regimes, a scarred regime emerges: Here, the decorrelator is spatiotemporally highly nonuniform, being dominated by rare and random scattering events seeding secondary light cones. As the spin correlation length decreases with increasing $T$, the distinction between these regimes disappears and at high temperature the previously studied chaotic paramagnetic regime emerges. For this, we elucidate how, somewhat counterintuitively, the ballistic butterfly velocity arises from a diffusive spin dynamics.

arXiv:2011.04700•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•May 7, 2021•43 citations

Light-Cone Spreading of Perturbations and the Butterfly Effect in a Classical Spin Chain

Avijit Das, Saurish Chakrabarty, Abhishek Dhar +5 more

We find that the effects of a localized perturbation in a chaotic classical many-body system-the classical Heisenberg chain at infinite temperature-spread ballistically with a finite speed even when the local spin dynamics is diffusive. We study two complementary aspects of this butterfly effect: the rapid growth of the perturbation, and its simultaneous ballistic (light-cone) spread, as characterized by the Lyapunov exponents and the butterfly speed, respectively. We connect this to recent studies of the out-of-time-ordered commutators (OTOC), which have been proposed as an indicator of chaos in a quantum system. We provide a straightforward identification of the OTOC with a natural correlator in our system and demonstrate that many of its interesting qualitative features are present in the classical system. Finally, by analyzing the scaling forms, we relate the growth, spread, and propagation of the perturbation with the growth of one-dimensional interfaces described by the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation.

arXiv:1711.07505•Physical Review Letters•Jul 10, 2018•75 citations

Classical and quantum butterfly effect in nonlinear vector mechanics

Nikita Kolganov, Dmitrii A. Trunin

We establish the correspondence between the classical and quantum butterfly effects in nonlinear vector mechanics with the broken $O(N)$ symmetry. On one hand, we analytically calculate the out-of-time-ordered correlation functions and the quantum Lyapunov exponent using the augmented Schwinger-Keldysh technique in the large-$N$ limit. On the other hand, we numerically estimate the classical Lyapunov exponent in the high-temperature limit, where the classical chaotic behavior emerges. In both cases, Lyapunov exponents approximately coincide and scale as $\ensuremath{\kappa}\ensuremath{\approx}1.3\sqrt[4]{\ensuremath{\lambda}T}/N$ with temperature $T$, number of degrees of freedom $N$, and coupling constant $\ensuremath{\lambda}$.

arXiv:2205.05663•Physical review. D/Physical review. D.•Jul 8, 2022•14 citations

Chaos in the butterfly cone

Márk Mezei, Gábor Sárosi

Abstract A simple probe of chaos and operator growth in many-body quantum systems is the out of time ordered four point function. In a large class of local systems, the effects of chaos in this correlator build up exponentially fast inside the so called butterfly cone. It has been previously observed that the growth of these effects is organized along rays and can be characterized by a velocity dependent Lyapunov exponent, λ(v). We show that this exponent is bounded inside the butterfly cone as λ(v) ≤ 2πT (1 − | v |/v B ), where T is the temperature and v B is the butterfly speed. This result generalizes the chaos bound of Maldacena, Shenker and Stanford. We study λ(v) in some examples such as two dimensional SYK models and holographic gauge theories, and observe that in these systems the bound gets saturated at some critical velocity v * < v B . In this sense, boosting a system enhances chaos. We discuss the connection to conformal Regge theory, where λ(v) is related to the spin of the leading large N Regge trajectory, and controls the four point function in an interpolating regime between the Regge and the light cone limit. Finally, we comment on the generalization of the chaos bound to boosted and rotating ensembles and clarify some recent results on this in the literature.

arXiv:1908.03574•Journal of High Energy Physics•Jan 29, 2020•62 citations

Many-body chaos and anomalous diffusion across thermal phase transitions in two dimensions

Sibaram Ruidas

Chaos is an important characterization of classical dynamical systems. How is chaos linked to the long-time dynamics of collective modes across phases and phase transitions? We address this by studying chaos across Ising and Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions in classical XXZ model. We show that spatio-temporal chaotic properties have crossovers across the transitions and distinct temperature dependence in the high and low-temperature phases which show normal and anomalous diffusions, respectively. Our results also provide new insights into the dynamics of interacting quantum systems in the semiclassical limit.

•Nov 1, 2021•18 citations

Fast Scrambling at the Boundary

Ancel Larzul, Anirvan M. Sengupta, Antoine Georges +1 more

Many-body systems that saturate the quantum bound on chaos are attracting interest across a wide range of fields. Notable examples include the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and its variations, all characterized by some form or randomness and all-to-all couplings. Here, we study many-body quantum chaos in a quantum impurity model showing non-Fermi-liquid physics, the overscreened multichannel S U ( N ) Kondo model. We exactly compute the low-temperature behavior of the out-of-time order correlator in the limit of large N and large number of channels, K , at a fixed ratio γ = K / N . Because of strong correlations at the impurity site, the spin fractionalizes in auxiliary fermions and bosons. We show that all the degrees of freedom of our theory acquire a Lyapunov exponent that is linear in temperature as T → 0 , with a prefactor that depends on γ . Remarkably, for N = K , the impurity spin displays maximal chaos, while bosons and fermions only reach half of the maximal Lyapunov exponent. Our results highlight two key features: a nondisordered model that is maximally chaotic due to strong correlations at its boundary, with the maximal chaos appearing in a composite gauge-invariant operator, the impurity spin, and not in the auxiliary single-particle degrees of freedom.

arXiv:2407.13617•Physical Review X•Jan 20, 2026•0 citations
We study the chaotic dynamics in a classical many-body system of interacting spins on the kagome lattice. We characterize many-body chaos via the butterfly effect as captured by an appropriate out-of-time-ordered commutator. Due to the emergence of a spin-liquid phase, the chaotic dynamics extends all the way to zero temperature. We thus determine the full temperature dependence of two complementary aspects of the butterfly effect: the Lyapunov exponent, \ensuremathμ\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremathμ, and the butterfly speed, vb{v}_{b}vb​, and study their interrelations with usual measures of spin dynamics such as the spin-diffusion constant, DDD, and spin-autocorrelation time, \ensuremathτ\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremathτ. We find that they all exhibit power-law behavior at low temperature, consistent with scaling of the form D\ensuremath∼vb2/\ensuremathμD\ensuremath{\sim}{v}_{b}^{2}/\ensuremath{\mu}D\ensuremath∼vb2​/\ensuremathμ and \ensuremathτ\ensuremath−1\ensuremath∼T{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}\ensuremath{\sim}T\ensuremathτ\ensuremath−1\ensuremath∼T. The vanishing of \ensuremathμ\ensuremath∼T0.48\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{\sim}{T}^{0.48}\ensuremathμ\ensuremath∼T0.48 is parametrically slower than that of the corresponding quantum bound, \ensuremathμ\ensuremath∼T\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{\sim}T\ensuremathμ\ensuremath∼T, raising interesting questions regarding the semiclassical limit of such spin systems.
We study correlations, transport, and chaos in a Heisenberg magnet as a classical model many-body system. By varying temperature and dimensionality, we can tune between settings with and without symmetry breaking and accompanying collective modes or quasiparticles (spin waves) which in the limit of low temperatures become increasingly long-lived. Changing the sign of the exchange interaction from a ferro- to an antiferromagnetic one varies the spin-wave spectrum, and hence the low-energy spectral density. We analyze both conventional and out-of-time-ordered spin correlators (decorrelators) to track the spreading of a spatiotemporally localized perturbation---the wing beat of the butterfly---as well as transport coefficients and Lyapunov exponents. We identify a number of qualitatively different regimes. Trivially, at T=0T=0T=0, there is no dynamics at all. In the limit of low temperature, T=0+T={0}^{+}T=0+, integrability emerges, with infinitely long-lived magnons; here the wave packet created by the perturbation propagates ballistically, yielding a light cone at the spin-wave velocity which thus subsumes the butterfly velocity; inside the light cone, a pattern characteristic of the free spin-wave spectrum is visible at short times. On top of this, residual interactions (nonlinearities in the equations of motion) lead to spin-wave lifetimes which, while divergent in this limit, remain finite at any nonzero TTT. At the longest times, this leads to a standard chaotic regime; for this regime, we show that the Lyapunov exponent is simply proportional to the (inverse) spin-wave lifetime. Visibly strikingly, between this and the short-time integrable regimes, a scarred regime emerges: Here, the decorrelator is spatiotemporally highly nonuniform, being dominated by rare and random scattering events seeding secondary light cones. As the spin correlation length decreases with increasing TTT, the distinction between these regimes disappears and at high temperature the previously studied chaotic paramagnetic regime emerges. For this, we elucidate how, somewhat counterintuitively, the ballistic butterfly velocity arises from a diffusive spin dynamics.
We find that the effects of a localized perturbation in a chaotic classical many-body system-the classical Heisenberg chain at infinite temperature-spread ballistically with a finite speed even when the local spin dynamics is diffusive. We study two complementary aspects of this butterfly effect: the rapid growth of the perturbation, and its simultaneous ballistic (light-cone) spread, as characterized by the Lyapunov exponents and the butterfly speed, respectively. We connect this to recent studies of the out-of-time-ordered commutators (OTOC), which have been proposed as an indicator of chaos in a quantum system. We provide a straightforward identification of the OTOC with a natural correlator in our system and demonstrate that many of its interesting qualitative features are present in the classical system. Finally, by analyzing the scaling forms, we relate the growth, spread, and propagation of the perturbation with the growth of one-dimensional interfaces described by the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation.
We establish the correspondence between the classical and quantum butterfly effects in nonlinear vector mechanics with the broken O(N)O(N)O(N) symmetry. On one hand, we analytically calculate the out-of-time-ordered correlation functions and the quantum Lyapunov exponent using the augmented Schwinger-Keldysh technique in the large-NNN limit. On the other hand, we numerically estimate the classical Lyapunov exponent in the high-temperature limit, where the classical chaotic behavior emerges. In both cases, Lyapunov exponents approximately coincide and scale as $\ensuremath{\kappa}\ensuremath{\approx}1.3\sqrt[4]{\ensuremath{\lambda}T}/N$ with temperature TTT, number of degrees of freedom NNN, and coupling constant $\ensuremath{\lambda}$.
Abstract A simple probe of chaos and operator growth in many-body quantum systems is the out of time ordered four point function. In a large class of local systems, the effects of chaos in this correlator build up exponentially fast inside the so called butterfly cone. It has been previously observed that the growth of these effects is organized along rays and can be characterized by a velocity dependent Lyapunov exponent, λ(v). We show that this exponent is bounded inside the butterfly cone as λ(v) ≤ 2πT (1 − | v |/v B ), where T is the temperature and v B is the butterfly speed. This result generalizes the chaos bound of Maldacena, Shenker and Stanford. We study λ(v) in some examples such as two dimensional SYK models and holographic gauge theories, and observe that in these systems the bound gets saturated at some critical velocity v * < v B . In this sense, boosting a system enhances chaos. We discuss the connection to conformal Regge theory, where λ(v) is related to the spin of the leading large N Regge trajectory, and controls the four point function in an interpolating regime between the Regge and the light cone limit. Finally, we comment on the generalization of the chaos bound to boosted and rotating ensembles and clarify some recent results on this in the literature.
Chaos is an important characterization of classical dynamical systems. How is chaos linked to the long-time dynamics of collective modes across phases and phase transitions? We address this by studying chaos across Ising and Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions in classical XXZ model. We show that spatio-temporal chaotic properties have crossovers across the transitions and distinct temperature dependence in the high and low-temperature phases which show normal and anomalous diffusions, respectively. Our results also provide new insights into the dynamics of interacting quantum systems in the semiclassical limit.
Many-body systems that saturate the quantum bound on chaos are attracting interest across a wide range of fields. Notable examples include the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and its variations, all characterized by some form or randomness and all-to-all couplings. Here, we study many-body quantum chaos in a quantum impurity model showing non-Fermi-liquid physics, the overscreened multichannel S U ( N ) Kondo model. We exactly compute the low-temperature behavior of the out-of-time order correlator in the limit of large N and large number of channels, K , at a fixed ratio γ = K / N . Because of strong correlations at the impurity site, the spin fractionalizes in auxiliary fermions and bosons. We show that all the degrees of freedom of our theory acquire a Lyapunov exponent that is linear in temperature as T → 0 , with a prefactor that depends on γ . Remarkably, for N = K , the impurity spin displays maximal chaos, while bosons and fermions only reach half of the maximal Lyapunov exponent. Our results highlight two key features: a nondisordered model that is maximally chaotic due to strong correlations at its boundary, with the maximal chaos appearing in a composite gauge-invariant operator, the impurity spin, and not in the auxiliary single-particle degrees of freedom.