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arXiv:2110.14649 · Journal of High Energy Physics

Non-Gaussianities in the statistical distribution of heavy OPE coefficients and wormholes

Alexandre Belin, Jan De Boer A, Diego Liška

Published Jun 20, 2022• 46 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract The Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis makes a prediction for the statistical distribution of matrix elements of simple operators in energy eigenstates of chaotic quantum systems. As a leading approximation, off-diagonal matrix elements are described by Gaussian random variables but higher-point correlation functions enforce non-Gaussian corrections which are further exponentially suppressed in the entropy. In this paper, we investigate non- Gaussian corrections to the statistical distribution of heavy-heavy-heavy OPE coefficients in chaotic two-dimensional conformal field theories. Using the Virasoro crossing kernels, we provide asymptotic formulas involving arbitrary numbers of OPE coefficients from modular invariance on genus-g surfaces. We find that the non-Gaussianities are further exponentially suppressed in the entropy, much like the ETH. We discuss the implication of these results for products of CFT partition functions in gravity and Euclidean wormholes. Our results suggest that there are new connected wormhole geometries that dominate over the genus-two wormhole.

DOI
10.1007/jhep06(2022)116

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Abstract The Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis makes a prediction for the statistical distribution of matrix elements of simple operators in energy eigenstates of chaotic quantum systems. As a leading approximation, off-diagonal matrix elements are described by Gaussian random variables but higher-point correlation functions enforce non-Gaussian corrections which are further exponentially suppressed in the entropy. In this paper, we investigate non- Gaussian corrections to the statistical distribution of heavy-heavy-heavy OPE coefficients in chaotic two-dimensional conformal field theories. Using the Virasoro crossing kernels, we provide asymptotic formulas involving arbitrary numbers of OPE coefficients from modular invariance on genus-g surfaces. We find that the non-Gaussianities are further exponentially suppressed in the entropy, much like the ETH. We discuss the implication of these results for products of CFT partition functions in gravity and Euclidean wormholes. Our results suggest that there are new connected wormhole geometries that dominate over the genus-two wormhole.
Abstract We propose an ansatz for OPE coefficients in chaotic conformal field theories which generalizes the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis and describes any OPE coefficient involving heavy operators as a random variable with a Gaussian distribution. In two dimensions this ansatz enables us to compute higher moments of the OPE coefficients and analyse two and four-point functions of OPE coefficients, which we relate to genus-2 partition functions and their squares. We compare the results of our ansatz to solutions of Einstein gravity in AdS 3 , including a Euclidean wormhole that connects two genus-2 surfaces. Our ansatz reproduces the non-perturbative correction of the wormhole, giving it a physical interpretation in terms of OPE statistics. We propose that calculations performed within the semi-classical low-energy gravitational theory are only sensitive to the random nature of OPE coefficients, which explains the apparent lack of factorization in products of partition functions.
Abstract The spectral form factor is a powerful probe of quantum chaos that diagnoses the statistics of energy levels, but is blind to other features of a theory such as matrix elements of operators or OPE coefficients in conformal field theories. In this paper, we introduce generalized spectral form factors: new probes of quantum chaos sensitive to the dynamical data of a theory. These quantities can be studied using random matrix theory and an effective theory of quantum chaos. We focus our attention on a particular combination of heavy-heavy-heavy OPE coefficients that generalizes the genus-2 partition function of two-dimensional CFTs, for which we define a form factor. Assuming that random matrix theory applies to chaotic CFTs, we probe heavy-heavy-heavy OPE coefficients and find statistical correlations that agree with the OPE Randomness Hypothesis: these coefficients have a random tensor component. The EFT of quantum chaos predicts that the genus-2 form factor displays a ramp and a plateau. Our results suggest that this is a common property of generalized spectral form factors.
The spectral form factor is a powerful probe of quantum chaos that diagnoses the statistics of energy levels, but is blind to other features of a theory such as matrix elements of operators or OPE coefficients in conformal field theories. In this paper, we introduce generalized spectral form factors: new probes of quantum chaos sensitive to the dynamical data of a theory. These quantities can be studied using an effective theory of quantum chaos. We focus our attention on a particular combination of heavy-heavy-heavy OPE coefficients that generalizes the genus-2 partition function of two-dimensional CFTs, for which we define a spectral form factor. We probe the statistics of heavy-heavy-heavy OPE coefficients and confirm the OPE Randomness Hypothesis: these coefficients have a random matrix component in the ergodic regime. The EFT of quantum chaos predicts that the genus-2 spectral form factor displays a ramp and a plateau. Our results suggest that this is a common property of generalized spectral form factors.
Abstract We derive a universal asymptotic formula for generic boundary conditions for the average value of the bulk-to-boundary and boundary Operator Product Expansion coefficients of any unitary, compact two-dimensional Boundary CFT (BCFT) with c > 1. The asymptotic limit consists of taking one or more boundary primary operators — which transform under a single copy of the Virasoro algebra — to have parametrically large conformal dimension for fixed central charge. In particular, we find a single universal expression that interpolates between distinct heavy regimes, exactly as in the case of bulk OPE asymptotics [1]. The expression depends universally on the boundary entropy and the central charge, and not on any other details of the theory. We derive these asymptotics by studying crossing symmetry of various correlation functions on higher genus Riemann surfaces with open boundaries. Essential in the derivation is the use of the irrational versions of the crossing kernels that relate holomorphic Virasoro blocks in different channels. Our results strongly suggest an extended version of the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis for boundary OPE coefficients, where the hierarchy between the diagonal and non-diagonal term in the ansatz is further controlled by the boundary entropy. We finally comment on the applications of our results in the context of AdS3/BCFT2, as well as on the recent relation of BCFTs with lower dimensional models of evaporating black holes.
We investigate the off-diagonal sector of eigenstate thermalization using both local and nonlocal probes in two-dimensional conformal field theories. A novel analysis of the asymptotics of operator product expansion coefficients via the modular bootstrap is performed to extract the behavior of the off-diagonal matrix elements. We also probe this sector using semiclassical heavy-light Virasoro blocks. The results demonstrate signatures of thermality and confirm the entropic suppression of the off-diagonal elements as necessitated by the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis.
We derive an asymptotic formula for operator product expansion coefficients of heavy operators in two dimensional conformal field theory. This follows from modular invariance of the genus two partition function, and generalises the asymptotic formula for the density of states from torus modular invariance. The resulting formula is universal, depending only on the central charge, but involves the asymptotic behaviour of genus two conformal blocks. We use monodromy techniques to compute the asymptotics of the relevant blocks at large central charge to determine the behaviour explicitly.