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arXiv:2006.06019 · Physical Review Research

Traversable wormhole and Hawking-Page transition in coupled complex SYK models

Sharmistha Sahoo, Étienne Lantagne-Hurtubise, Stephan Plugge, Marcel Franz

Published Oct 8, 2020• 52 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Recent work has shown that coupling two identical Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models can realize a phase of matter that is holographically dual to an eternal traversable wormhole.This phase supports revival oscillations between two quantum chaotic systems that can be interpreted as information traversing the wormhole.Here we generalize these ideas to a pair of coupled SYK models with complex fermions that respect a global U(1) charge symmetry.Such models show richer behavior than conventional SYK models with Majorana fermions and may be easier to realize experimentally.We consider two different couplings, namely, tunneling and charge-conserving two-body interactions, and obtain the corresponding phase diagram using a combination of numerical and analytical techniques.At low temperature, we find a charge-neutral gapped phase that supports revival oscillations, with a ground state close to the thermofield double, which we argue is dual to a traversable wormhole.We also find two different gapless non-Fermi liquid phases with tunable charge density which we interpret as dual to a "large" and "small" charged black hole.The gapped and gapless phases are separated by a first-order phase transition of the Hawking-Page type.Finally, we discuss an SU(2)-symmetric limit of our model that is closely related to proposed realizations of SYK physics with spinful fermions in graphene, and explain its relevance for future experiments on this system.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.2.043049

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Recent work has shown that coupling two identical Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models can realize a phase of matter that is holographically dual to an eternal traversable wormhole.This phase supports revival oscillations between two quantum chaotic systems that can be interpreted as information traversing the wormhole.Here we generalize these ideas to a pair of coupled SYK models with complex fermions that respect a global U(1) charge symmetry.Such models show richer behavior than conventional SYK models with Majorana fermions and may be easier to realize experimentally.We consider two different couplings, namely, tunneling and charge-conserving two-body interactions, and obtain the corresponding phase diagram using a combination of numerical and analytical techniques.At low temperature, we find a charge-neutral gapped phase that supports revival oscillations, with a ground state close to the thermofield double, which we argue is dual to a traversable wormhole.We also find two different gapless non-Fermi liquid phases with tunable charge density which we interpret as dual to a "large" and "small" charged black hole.The gapped and gapless phases are separated by a first-order phase transition of the Hawking-Page type.Finally, we discuss an SU(2)-symmetric limit of our model that is closely related to proposed realizations of SYK physics with spinful fermions in graphene, and explain its relevance for future experiments on this system.
It has been recently proposed by Maldacena and Qi that an eternal traversable wormhole in a two-dimensional anti--de Sitter space is the gravity dual of the low temperature limit of two Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models coupled by a relevant interaction (which we will refer to as spin operator). We study spectral and eigenstate properties of this coupled SYK model. We find that level statistics in the tail of the spectrum, and for a sufficiently weak coupling, show substantial deviations from random matrix theory, which suggests that traversable wormholes are not quantum chaotic. By contrast, for sufficiently strong coupling, corresponding to the black hole phase, level statistics are well described by random matrix theory. This transition in level statistics coincides approximately with a previously reported Hawking-Page transition for weak coupling. We show explicitly that this thermodynamic transition turns into a sharp crossover as the coupling increases. Likewise, this critical coupling also corresponds to the one at which the overlap between the ground state and the thermofield double state (TFD) is smallest. In the range of sizes we can reach by exact diagonalization, the ground state is well approximated by the TFD only in the strong coupling limit. This is due to the fact that the ground state is close to the eigenstate of the spin operator corresponding to the lowest eigenvalue which is an exact TFD at infinite temperature. In this region, the spectral density is separated into blobs centered around the eigenvalues of the spin operator. For weaker couplings, the exponential decay of coefficients in a tensor product basis, typical of the TFD, becomes power law. Finally, we also find that the total Hamiltonian has an additional discrete symmetry which has not been reported previously.
A pair of identical Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models with bilinear coupling forms a quantum dual of a traversable wormhole, with a ground state close to the so called thermofield double state. We use adiabaticity arguments and numerical simulations to show that the character of the ground state remains unchanged when interaction strengths in the two SYK models become imbalanced. Analysis of thermodynamic and dynamical quantities highlights the key signatures of the wormhole phase in the imbalanced case. Further adiabatic evolution naturally leads to the ``maximally imbalanced'' limit where fermions in a single SYK model are each coupled to a free Majorana zero mode. This limit is interesting because it could be more easily realized using various setups proposed to implement the SYK model in a laboratory. We find, based on numerical studies of the quantum mechanical model, that this limiting case is marginal in that it retains some of the characteristic signatures of the wormhole physics, such as the spectral gap and revival dynamics, but lacks others so that it likely does not represent the full-fledged wormhole dual. We discuss how this scenario could be implemented in the proposed realization of the SYK physics in quantum wires of finite length coupled to a disordered quantum dot.
Abstract We investigate two sparse Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) systems coupled by a bilinear term as a holographic quantum mechanical description of an eternal traversable wormhole in the low temperature limit. Each SYK system consists of N Majorana fermions coupled by random q-body interactions. The degree of sparseness is captured by a regular hypergraph in such a way that the Hamiltonian contains exactly k N independent terms. We improve on the theoretical understanding of the sparseness property by using known measures of hypergraph expansion. We show that the sparse version of the two coupled SYK model is gapped with a ground state close to a thermofield double state. Using Krylov subspace and parallelization techniques, we simulate the system for q = 4 and q = 8. The sparsity of the model allows us to explore larger values of N than the ones existing in the literature for the all-to-all SYK. We analyze in detail the two-point functions and the transmission amplitude of signals between the two systems. We identify a range of parameters where revivals obey the scaling predicted by holography and signals can be interpreted as traversing the wormhole.
In this work, we study a generalization of the coupled Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model with U(1)U(1)U(1) charge conservations. The model contains two copies of the complex SYK model at different chemical potentials, coupled by a direct hopping term. In the zero-temperature and small coupling limit with small averaged chemical potential, the ground state is an eternal wormhole connecting two sides, with a specific charge Q=0Q=0Q=0, which is equivalent to a thermofield double state. We derive the conformal Green's functions and determine corresponding IR parameters. At higher chemical potential, the system transit into the black hole phase. We further derive the Schwarzian effective action and study its quench dynamics. Finally, we compare numerical results with the analytical predictions.
We study the thermodynamic properties of a two-site coupled complex qqq-body Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model in the large-NNN limit by solving the saddle-point Schwinger-Dyson (SD) equations. We find that its phase diagram is richer than in the Majorana case. In the grand canonical ensemble, we identify a region of small chemical potential and weak coupling between the two SYKs, for which two first order thermodynamic phase transitions occur as a function of temperature. First, we observe a transition from a cold wormhole phase to an intermediate phase that may correspond to a charged wormhole. For a higher temperature, there is another first order transition to the black hole phase. As in the Majorana case, the low temperature wormhole phase is gapped, and for sufficiently large coupling between the two complex SYK, or chemical potential, the first order transitions become crossovers. The total charge is a good indicator to study the phase diagram of the model; it is zero in the cold wormhole phase and jumps discontinuously at the temperatures at which the transitions take place. Based on the approximate conformal symmetry of the ground state, expected to be close to a thermofield double state, we identify the effective low energy action of the model. It is a generalized Schwarzian action with $SL(2,R)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}U(1)$ symmetry with an additional potential and an extra degree of freedom related to the charge. In the large NNN and low temperature limit, results from this low energy action are consistent with those from the solution of the SD equations. Likewise, a large-qqq analytical calculation of thermodynamic properties confirms the existence of the wormhole phase. Our findings are a preliminary step toward the characterization of traversable wormholes by its field theory dual, a charged strongly interacting fermionic system, that is easier to model experimentally.
Abstract In this work, we study a generalization of the coupled Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model with U(1) charge conservations. The model contains two copies of the complex SYK model at different chemical potentials, coupled by a direct hopping term. In the zero-temperature and small coupling limit with small averaged chemical potential, the ground state is an eternal wormhole connecting two sides, with a specific chargeQ= 0, which is equivalent to a thermofield double state. We derive the conformal Green’s functions and determine corresponding IR parameters. At higher chemical potential, the system transit into the black hole phase. We further derive the Schwarzian effective action and study its quench dynamics. Finally, we compare numerical results with the analytical predictions.