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arXiv:2010.11633 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

Euclidean wormhole in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model

Antonio M. Garcı́a-Garcı́a, Victor Godet

Published Feb 19, 2021• 61 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study a two-site Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model with complex couplings, and identify a low temperature transition to a gapped phase characterized by a constant in temperature free energy. This transition is observed without introducing a coupling between the two sites, and only appears after ensemble average over the complex couplings. We propose a gravity interpretation of these results by constructing an explicit solution of Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity with matter: a two-dimensional Euclidean wormhole whose geometry is the double trumpet. This solution is sustained by imaginary sources for a marginal operator, without the need of a coupling between the two boundaries. As the temperature is decreased, there is a transition from a disconnected phase with two black holes to the connected wormhole phase, in qualitative agreement with the SYK observation. The expectation value of the marginal operator is an order parameter for this transition. This illustrates in a concrete setup how a Euclidean wormhole can arise from an average over field theory couplings.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.103.046014

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We study a two-site Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model with complex couplings, and identify a low temperature transition to a gapped phase characterized by a constant in temperature free energy. This transition is observed without introducing a coupling between the two sites, and only appears after ensemble average over the complex couplings. We propose a gravity interpretation of these results by constructing an explicit solution of Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity with matter: a two-dimensional Euclidean wormhole whose geometry is the double trumpet. This solution is sustained by imaginary sources for a marginal operator, without the need of a coupling between the two boundaries. As the temperature is decreased, there is a transition from a disconnected phase with two black holes to the connected wormhole phase, in qualitative agreement with the SYK observation. The expectation value of the marginal operator is an order parameter for this transition. This illustrates in a concrete setup how a Euclidean wormhole can arise from an average over field theory couplings.
We derive a large-N wormhole saddle in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model for the variance of the thermal one-point function of a heavy operator across realizations of the microscopic couplings. We propose that this saddle describes a double trumpet geometry. In the double-scaling limit, we express the wormhole as a transition amplitude in an emergent bulk Hilbert space of chords connecting the two boundaries. In the Schwarzian limit, the chords proliferate and the wormhole defines a quantum transition amplitude in the open-universe Hilbert space of Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity. Comparing the SYK wormhole amplitude with its counterpart in JT gravity coupled to matter provides a direct test of the heavy-operator randomness hypothesis in SYK. The microscopic SYK couplings specify the α-parameters of the wormhole. For a fixed realization of the couplings, we compute the observable in the corresponding α-state. We provide the bulk wavefunction of the associated half-wormhole, which exhibits erratic correlations in the length basis that do not self-average. We extend the bulk description to the Hilbert space of a closed universe. We point out that the correlation chords from which the wormhole geometry emerges structurally resemble local observer worldlines.
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.
We present a JT gravity set up that reveals the evidence of (Euclidean) wormhole to black hole phase transitions at finite charge density and or chemical potential. We identify the low temperature \emph{gapped} phase of the system as the charged wormhole solution that is conjectured to be dual to a two site complex SYK model at finite density. As the temperature of the system is increased, it passes over to a hot SYK phase which is dual to a two black hole system at finite density. Our analysis further reveals the existence of a (two site) Majorana SYK phase right at the critical point of the \emph{first} order transition which glues the cold and the hot SYK phases together.
We study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, NNN fermions with a qqq-body interaction of infinite range, coupled to a Markovian environment. Close to the infinite-temperature steady state, the real-time Lindbladian dynamics of this system is identical to the near-zero-temperature dynamics in Euclidean time of a two-site non-Hermitian SYK with intersite coupling whose gravity dual has been recently related to wormhole configurations. We show that the saddle-point equations in the real-time formulation are identical to those in Euclidean time. Indeed, an explicit calculation of Green's functions at low temperature, numerical for q=4q=4q=4 and analytical for q=2q=2q=2 and large qqq, illustrates this equivalence. Only for very strong coupling does the decay rate approach the linear dependence on the coupling characteristic of a dissipation-driven approach to the steady state. For q>2q>2q>2, we identify a potential gravity dual of the real-time dissipative SYK model: a double-trumpet configuration in a near-de Sitter space in two dimensions with matter. This configuration, which we term a Keldysh wormhole, is responsible for a finite decay rate even in the absence of coupling to the environment.
Abstract Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, which describes N randomly interacting Majorana fermions in 0+1 dimension, is found to be an solvable UV-complete toy model for holographic duality in nearly AdS2 dilaton gravity. Ref. [1] proposed a modified model by coupling two identical SYK models, which at low-energy limit is dual to a global AdS2 geometry. This geometry is an “eternal wormhole” because the two boundaries are causally connected. Increasing the temperature drives a Hawking-Page like transition from the eternal wormhole geometry to two disconnected black holes with coupled matter field. To gain more understanding of the coupled SYK model, in this work, we study the finite temperature spectral function of this system by numerical solving the Schwinger-Dyson equation in real-time. We find in the low-temperature phase the system is well described by weakly interacting fermions with renormalized single-particle gap, while in the high temperature phase the system is strongly interacting and the single-particle peaks merge. We also study the q dependence of the spectral function.
Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, which describes N randomly interacting Majorana fermions in 0+1 dimension, is found to be an solvable UV-complete toy model for holographic duality in nearly AdS2 dilaton gravity. Ref. [1] proposed a modified model by coupling two identical SYK models, which at low-energy limit is dual to a global AdS2 geometry. This geometry is an “eternal wormhole" because the two boundaries are causally connected. Increasing the temperature drives a Hawking-Page like transition from the eternal wormhole geometry to two disconnected black holes with coupled matter field. To gain more understanding of the coupled SYK model, in this work, we study the finite temperature spectral function of this system by numerical solving the Schwinger-Dyson equation in real-time. We find in the low-temperature phase the system is well described by weakly interacting fermions with renormalized single-particle gap, while in the high temperature phase the system is strongly interacting and the single-particle peaks merge. We also study the q dependence of the spectral function.