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arXiv:2104.05721 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Emergence of many-body quantum chaos via spontaneous breaking of unitarity

Yunxiang Liao, Victor M. Galitski

Published Apr 18, 2022• 18 citations
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Abstract

It is suggested that many-body quantum chaos appears as the spontaneous symmetry breaking of unitarity in interacting quantum many-body systems. It has been shown that many-body level statistics, probed by the spectral form factor (SFF) defined as $K(\ensuremath{\eta},t)=\ensuremath{\langle}|\mathrm{Tr}exp(\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\eta}H+itH){|}^{2}\ensuremath{\rangle}$, is dominated by a diffuson-type mode in a field theory analysis. The key finding of this Letter is that the ``unitary'' $\ensuremath{\eta}=0$ case is different from the $\ensuremath{\eta}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{0}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$ limit, with the latter leading to a finite mass of these modes due to interactions. This mass suppresses a rapid exponential ramp in the SFF, which is responsible for the fast emergence of Poisson statistics in the noninteracting case, and gives rise to a nontrivial random matrix structure of many-body levels. The interaction-induced mass in the SFF shares similarities with the dephasing rate in the theory of weak localization and the Lyapunov exponent of the out-of-time-ordered correlators.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.105.l140202

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It is suggested that many-body quantum chaos appears as the spontaneous symmetry breaking of unitarity in interacting quantum many-body systems. It has been shown that many-body level statistics, probed by the spectral form factor (SFF) defined as K(\ensuremathη,t)=\ensuremath⟨∣Trexp(\ensuremath−\ensuremathηH+itH)∣2\ensuremath⟩K(\ensuremath{\eta},t)=\ensuremath{\langle}|\mathrm{Tr}exp(\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\eta}H+itH){|}^{2}\ensuremath{\rangle}K(\ensuremathη,t)=\ensuremath⟨∣Trexp(\ensuremath−\ensuremathηH+itH)∣2\ensuremath⟩, is dominated by a diffuson-type mode in a field theory analysis. The key finding of this Letter is that the ``unitary'' \ensuremathη=0\ensuremath{\eta}=0\ensuremathη=0 case is different from the \ensuremathη\ensuremath→0\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi\ensuremath{\eta}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{0}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}\ensuremathη\ensuremath→0\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi limit, with the latter leading to a finite mass of these modes due to interactions. This mass suppresses a rapid exponential ramp in the SFF, which is responsible for the fast emergence of Poisson statistics in the noninteracting case, and gives rise to a nontrivial random matrix structure of many-body levels. The interaction-induced mass in the SFF shares similarities with the dephasing rate in the theory of weak localization and the Lyapunov exponent of the out-of-time-ordered correlators.
Ergodicity is a fundamental principle of statistical mechanics underlying the behavior of generic quantum many-body systems.However, how this universal many-body quantum chaotic regime emerges due to interactions remains largely a puzzle.This paper demonstrates using both heuristic arguments and a microscopic calculation that a dephasing mechanism, similar to Altshuler-Aronov-Khmelnitskii dephasing in the theory of localization, underlies this transition to chaos.We focus on the behavior of the spectral form factor (SFF) as a function of "time" t, which characterizes level correlations in the many-body spectrum.The SFF can be expressed as a sum over periodic classical orbits and its behavior hinges on the interference of trajectories related to each other by a time translation.In the absence of interactions, time-translation symmetry is present for each individual particle, which leads to a fast exponential growth of the SFF and correspondingly loss of correlations between many-body levels.Interactions lead to dephasing, which disrupts interference, and breaks the massive time-translation symmetry down to a global time-translation/energy conservation.This in turn gives rise to the hallmark linear-in-t ramp in the SFF reflecting Wigner-Dyson level repulsion.This general picture is supported by a microscopic analysis of an interacting many-body model.Specifically, we study the complex SYK 2 + SYK 2 2 model, which allows to tune between an integrable and chaotic regime.It is shown that the dephasing mass vanishes in the former case, which maps to the noninteracting complex SYK 2 model via a time reparameterization.In contrast, the chaotic regime gives rise to dephasing, which suppresses the exponential ramp of the noninteracting theory and induces correlations between many-body levels.
We consider a noninteracting many-fermion system populating levels of a unitary random matrix ensemble (equivalent to the q=2 complex Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model)-a generic model of single-particle quantum chaos. We study the corresponding many-particle level statistics by calculating the spectral form factor analytically using algebraic methods of random matrix theory, and match it with an exact numerical simulation. Despite the integrability of the theory, the many-body spectral rigidity is found to have a surprisingly rich landscape. In particular, we find a residual repulsion of distant many-body levels stemming from single-particle chaos, together with islands of level attraction. These results are encoded in an exponential ramp in the spectral form factor, which we show to be a universal feature of nonergodic many-fermion systems embedded in a chaotic medium.
The emergence of random matrix spectral correlations in interacting quantum systems is a defining feature of quantum chaos. We study such correlations in terms of the spectral form factor and its moments in interacting chaotic few- and many-body systems, modeled by suitable random-matrix ensembles. We obtain the spectral form factor exactly for large Hilbert space dimension. Extrapolating those results to finite Hilbert space dimension we find a universal transition from the noninteracting to the strongly interacting case, which can be described as a simple combination of these two limits. This transition is governed by a single scaling parameter. In the bipartite case we derive similar results also for all moments of the spectral form factor. We confirm our results by extensive numerical studies and demonstrate that they apply to more realistic systems given by a pair of quantized kicked rotors as well. Ultimately we complement our analysis by a perturbative approach covering the small-coupling regime.
We consider systems of fermions evolved by noninteracting unitary circuits with correlated on-site potentials. When these potentials are drawn from the eigenvalue distribution of a circular random matrix ensemble, the single-particle sector exhibits chaotic dynamics. The corresponding many-body spectral form factors (SFFs) can be computed exactly, revealing signatures of single-particle chaos in the many-body spectral statistics. Due to the absence of interactions the SFF grows exponentially in time, a result which we demonstrate through simple arguments, scaling collapses, and closed-form evaluation of the SFF. Upon introducing interactions, the SFF crosses over to a linear growth regime consistent with many-body random matrix universality. Our exact results for the SFF provide a baseline for future studies of the crossover between single-particle and many-body random matrix behavior.
We investigate universal signatures of quantum chaos in the presence of time reversal symmetry (TRS) in generic many body quantum chaotic systems (gMBQCs). We study three classes of minimal models of gMBQCs with TRS, realized through random quantum circuits with (i) local TRS, (ii) global TRS, and (iii) TRS combined with discrete time-translation symmetry. In large local Hilbert space dimension qqq, we derive the emergence of random matrix theory (RMT) universality in the spectral form factor (SFF) at times larger than the Thouless time tTht_{\mathrm{Th}}tTh​, which diverges with system sizes in gMBQCs. At times before tTht_{\mathrm{Th}}tTh​, we identify universal behaviour beyond RMT by deriving explicit scaling functions of SFF in the thermodynamic limit. In particular, in the simplest non-trivial setting - preserving global TRS while breaking time translation symmetry - we show that the SFF is mapped to the partition function of an emergent classical ferromagnetic Ising model, where the Ising spins correspond to the time-parallel and time-reversed pairings of Feynman paths, and external magnetic fields are induced by TRS-breaking mechanisms. Without relying on the large-qqq limit, we develop a second independent derivation of the Ising scaling behaviour of SFF using space-time duality and parity symmetric non-Hermitian Ginibre ensembles. Moreover, we show that many body effects originating from time-reversed pairings of Feynman paths manifest in the two-point autocorrelation function (2PAF), the out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC), and the partial spectral form factor - quantities sensitive to both eigenvalue and eigenstate correlations. We establish that the fluctuations of 2PAF are governed by an emergent three-state Potts model, leading to an exponential scaling with the operator support size, at a rate set by the three-state Potts model. [See full abstract in the paper]
The emergence of random matrix spectral correlations in interacting quantum systems is a defining feature of quantum chaos. We study such correlations in terms of the spectral form factor and its moments in interacting chaotic few- and many-body systems, modeled by suitable random-matrix ensembles. We obtain the spectral form factor exactly for large Hilbert space dimension. Extrapolating those results to finite Hilbert space dimension we find a universal transition from the non-interacting to the strongly interacting case, which can be described as a simple combination of these two limits. This transition is governed by a single scaling parameter. In the bipartite case we derive similar results also for all moments of the spectral form factor. We confirm our results by extensive numerical studies and demonstrate that they apply to more realistic systems given by a pair of quantized kicked rotors as well. Ultimately we complement our analysis by a perturbative approach covering the small coupling regime.