A bstract We provide a detailed examination of a thermal out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) growing exponentially in time in systems without chaos. The system is a one-dimensional quantum mechanics with a potential whose part is an inverted harmonic oscillator. We numerically observe the exponential growth of the OTOC when the temperature is higher than a certain threshold. The Lyapunov exponent is found to be of the order of the classical Lyapunov exponent generated at the hilltop, and it remains non-vanishing even at high temperature. We adopt various shape of the potential and find these features universal. The study confirms that the exponential growth of the thermal OTOC does not necessarily mean chaos when the potential includes a local maximum. We also provide a bound for the Lyapunov exponent of the thermal OTOC in generic quantum mechanics in one dimension, which is of the same form as the chaos bound obtained by Maldacena, Shenker and Stanford.
A bstract We provide a detailed examination of a thermal out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) growing exponentially in time in systems without chaos. The system is a one-dimensional quantum mechanics with a potential whose part is an inverted harmonic oscillator. We numerically observe the exponential growth of the OTOC when the temperature is higher than a certain threshold. The Lyapunov exponent is found to be of the order of the classical Lyapunov exponent generated at the hilltop, and it remains non-vanishing even at high temperature. We adopt various shape of the potential and find these features universal. The study confirms that the exponential growth of the thermal OTOC does not necessarily mean chaos when the potential includes a local maximum. We also provide a bound for the Lyapunov exponent of the thermal OTOC in generic quantum mechanics in one dimension, which is of the same form as the chaos bound obtained by Maldacena, Shenker and Stanford.
Abstract Exponential growth of thermal out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) is an indicator of a possible gravity dual, and a simple toy quantum model showing the growth is being looked for. We consider a system of two harmonic oscillators coupled nonlinearly with each other, and numerically observe that the thermal OTOC grows exponentially in time. The system is well-known to be classically chaotic, and is a reduction of Yang-Mills-Higgs theory. The exponential growth is certified because the growth exponent (quantum Lyapunov exponent) of the thermal OTOC is well matched with the classical Lyapunov exponent, including their energy/temperature dependence. Even in the presence of the exponential growth in the OTOC, the energy level spacings are not sufficient to judge a Wigner distribution, hence the OTOC is a better indicator of quantum chaos.
The commutator [x(t),p] in an inverted harmonic oscillator (IHO) in one-dimensional quantum mechanics exhibits remarkable properties. It reduces to a c-number and does not show any quantum fluctuations for arbitrary states. Related to this nature, the quantum Lyapunov exponent computed through the out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) ⟨[x(t),p]2⟩ precisely agrees with the classical one. Hence, the OTOC may be regarded as an ideal indicator of the butterfly effect in the IHO. Since IHOs are ubiquitous in physics, these properties of the commutator [x(t),p] and the OTOCs might be seen in various situations, too. In order to clarify this point, as a first step, we investigate OTOCs in one-dimensional quantum mechanics with polynomial potentials, which exhibit butterfly effects around the peak of the potential in classical mechanics. We find two situations in which the OTOCs show exponential growth reproducing the classical Lyapunov exponent of the peak. The first one, which is obvious, is using a suitably localized wave packet near the peak, and the second one is taking a limit akin to the large-N limit in the noncritical string theories.
Out-of-Time-Ordered Commutators (OTOCs), representing a key diagnostic for scrambling as a facet of short-time quantum chaos, have attracted wide-ranging interest, from many-body physics to quantum gravity. By means of a suitable form of the Wigner-Moyal expansion, and invoking ensemble equivalence in statistical physics, we provide a consistent approach to the growth rate of the OTOC for many-body systems with chaotic classical limit where both the classical Lyapunov exponent and the quantum nature of the density of states enter. Applying this construction to quantized high-dimensional hyperbolic motion, i.e., a quantum chaotic system that exhibits gravity-like correlation functions in the late-time regime, we compute the OTOC growth rate Λ as a function of the number of degrees of freedom, f, and inverse temperature, β.
We show that the scaled growth rate, Λ/f, can be described by a universal function of fβ and displays a cross-over from classical to quantum behavior as we increase f and/or lower the temperature. In the deep quantum regime of infinite f, we find maximally fast scrambling in the sense of the Maldacena-Shenker-Stanford bound on chaos. This elucidates the non-perturbative mechanism underlying the saturation of the bound via quantum contributions to the mean density of states, and it provides further support for this dynamical system as a dual to two-dimensional quantum gravity. In this way, we present first evidence of maximally fast scrambling in a quantum chaotic system with a well-defined classical Hamiltonian limit, without invoking any external mechanism such as (disorder) averaging.
A bstract Out-of-time-ordered-correlators (OTOCs) have been suggested as a means to diagnose chaotic behavior in quantum mechanical systems. Recently, it was found that OTOCs display exponential growth for the inverted quantum harmonic oscillator, mirroring the fact that this system is classically and quantum mechanically unstable. In this work, I study OTOCs for the inverted anharmonic (pure quartic) oscillator in quantum mechanics, finding only oscillatory behavior despite the classically unstable nature of the system. For higher temperature, OTOCs seem to exhibit saturation consistent with a value of –2⟨ x 2 ⟩ T ⟨ p 2 ⟩ T at late times. I provide analytic evidence from the spectral zeta-function and the WKB method as well as direct numerical solutions of the Schrödinger equation that the inverted quartic oscillator possesses a real and positive energy eigenspectrum, and normalizable wave-functions.
Out-of-Time-Ordered Commutators (OTOCs), representing a key diagnostic for scrambling as a facet of short-time quantum chaos, have attracted wide-ranging interest, from many-body physics to quantum gravity. By means of a suitable form of the Wigner-Moyal expansion, and invoking ensemble equivalence in statistical physics, we provide a consistent approach to the growth rate of the OTOC for many-body systems with chaotic classical limit where both the classical Lyapunov exponent and the quantum nature of the density of states enter. Applying this construction to quantized high-dimensional hyperbolic motion, i.e., a quantum chaotic system that exhibits gravity-like correlation functions in the late-time regime, we compute the OTOC growth rate Λ as a function of the number of degrees of freedom, f, and inverse temperature, β. We show that the scaled growth rate, Λ/f, can be described by a universal function of fβ and displays a cross-over from classical to quantum behavior as we increase f and/or lower the temperature. In the deep quantum regime of infinite f, we find maximally fast scrambling in the sense of the Maldacena-Shenker-Stanford bound on chaos. This elucidates the non-perturbative mechanism underlying the saturation of the bound via quantum contributions to the mean density of states, and it provides further support for this dynamical system as a dual to two-dimensional quantum gravity. In this way, we present first evidence of maximally fast scrambling in a quantum chaotic system with a well-defined classical Hamiltonian limit, without invoking any external mechanism such as (disorder) averaging.
Recently, the out-of-time-ordered correlator(OTOC) and Krylov complexity have been studied actively as a measure of operator growth. OTOC is known to exhibit exponential growth in chaotic systems, which was confirmed in many previous works. However, in some non-chaotic systems, it was observed that OTOC shows chaotic behavior and cannot distinguish saddle-dominated scrambling from chaotic systems. For K-complexity, in the universal operator growth hypothesis, it was stated that Lanczos coefficients show linear growth in chaotic systems, which is the fastest. But recently, it appeared that Lanczos coefficients and K-complexity show chaotic behavior in the LMG model and cannot distinguish saddle-dominated scrambling from chaos. In this paper, we compute Lanczos coefficients and K-complexity in an inverted harmonic oscillator. We find that they exhibit chaotic behavior, which agrees with the case of the LMG model. We also analyze bounds on the quantum Lyapunov coefficient and the growth rate of Lanczos coefficients and find that there is a difference with the chaotic system. Microcanonical K-complexity is also analyzed and compared with the OTOC case.