Abstract We study nonlinear energy diffusion in the SYK chain within the framework of Schwinger-Keldysh effective field theory. We analytically construct the corresponding effective action up to 40th order in the derivative expansion. According to this effective action, we calculate the first order loop correction of the energy density response function, whose pole is the dispersion relation of energy diffusion. As expected, the standard derivative expansion of the classical dispersion relation breaks down due to the long-time tails. However, we find that the nonlinear contributions are so that one can still derive the dispersion relation in the power series. In fact, due to the long-time tails, the classical dispersion relation is split into two series distinct from the derivative expansion, and we show they are convergent. The radius of convergence is proportional to the ratio of thermal conductivity to diffusion constant.
The search for the conjectured QCD critical point in heavy-ion collisions requires to account for far-from equilibrium effects as well as fluctuations, and in particular non-Gaussian fluctuations, in the modeling of the dynamics of the hot and dense matter created in such collisions. In order to study far-from equilibrium effects as well as fluctuations, in this work we construct a Schwinger-Keldysh effective field theory (EFT) for the diffusion of the density to all orders in derivatives. The dissipation in the free part of our EFT follows the Boltzmann equation in the relaxation-time approximation (RTA). The interaction part of the EFT is constructed based on the self-interaction of the density field. We analytically find the quadratic and cubic parts of the KMS-invariant EFT in closed form, resummed in derivatives. We then explicitly compute the symmetrized three-point function at tree level, and investigate its analytical structure in detail. We also analytically calculate the branch-point singularity that appears in the structure of the two-point response function due to loop effects. Our results are important for future studies of the real-time dynamics of the correlation functions and the possible relation to thermalization when the system is far from equilibrium.
We construct a quantum Schwinger-Keldysh (SK) effective field theory for the diffusive hydrodynamics of a conserved scalar field. Quantum corrections within the SK framework are guided by fluctuation-dissipation relations, enforced via a dynamical Kubo-Martin-Schwinger (KMS) symmetry. We find that the KMS symmetry necessarily generates fluctuation contributions in the SK effective action at all orders in the noise field, thereby giving rise to intrinsically non-Gaussian noise. We use our results to compute one-loop quantum corrections to the two-point density-density retarded correlation function, leading to a quantum generalization of hydrodynamic long-time tails. Our results apply at arbitrarily high orders in
ℏ. The one-loop results for retarded correlation functions have been expressed in terms of a family of polynomials. We also provide a closed-form expression for the one-loop results at leading order in the wavevector expansion.
The search for the conjectured QCD critical point in heavy-ion collisions requires to account for far-from equilibrium effects as well as fluctuations, and in particular non-Gaussian fluctuations, in the modeling of the dynamics of the hot and dense matter created in such collisions. In order to study far-from equilibrium effects as well as fluctuations, in this work we construct a Schwinger-Keldysh effective field theory (EFT) for the diffusion of the density to all orders in derivatives. The dissipation in the free part of our EFT follows the Boltzmann equation in the relaxation-time approximation (RTA). The interaction part of the EFT is constructed based on the self-interaction of the density field. We analytically find the quadratic and cubic parts of the KMS-invariant EFT in closed form, resummed in derivatives. We then explicitly compute the symmetrized three-point function at tree level, and investigate its analytical structure in detail. We also analytically calculate the branch-point singularity that appears in the structure of the two-point response function due to loop effects. Our results are important for future studies of the real-time dynamics of the correlation functions and the possible relation to thermalization when the system is far from equilibrium.
A bstract The search for the conjectured QCD critical point in heavy-ion collisions requires to account for far-from equilibrium effects as well as fluctuations, and in particular non-Gaussian fluctuations, in the modeling of the dynamics of the hot and dense matter created in such collisions. In order to study far-from equilibrium effects as well as fluctuations, in this work we construct a Schwinger-Keldysh effective field theory (EFT) for the diffusion of the density to all orders in derivatives. The dissipation in the free part of our EFT follows the Boltzmann equation in the relaxation-time approximation (RTA). The interaction part of the EFT is constructed based on the self-interaction of the density field. We analytically find the quadratic and cubic parts of the KMS-invariant EFT in closed form, resummed in derivatives. We then explicitly compute the symmetrized three-point function at tree level, and investigate its analytical structure in detail. We also analytically calculate the branch-point singularity that appears in the structure of the two-point response function due to loop effects. Our results are important for future studies of the real-time dynamics of the correlation functions and the possible relation to thermalization when the system is far from equilibrium.
A bstract The physics of the SYK model at low temperatures is dominated by a soft mode governed by the Schwarzian action. In [1] the linearised action was derived from the soft mode contribution to the four-point function, and physical arguments were presented for its nonlinear completion to the Schwarzian. In this paper, we give two derivations of the full nonlinear effective action in the large p limit, where p is the number of fermions in the interaction terms of the Hamiltonian. The first derivation uses that the collective field action of the large- p SYK model is Liouville theory with a non-conformal boundary condition that we study in conformal perturbation theory. This derivation can be viewed as an explicit version of the renormalisation group argument for the nonlinear soft mode action in [2]. The second derivation uses an Ansatz for how the soft mode embeds into the microscopic configuration space of the collective fields. We generalise our results for the large- p SYK chain and obtain a “Schwarzian chain” effective action for it. These derivations showcase that the large- p SYK model is a rare system, in which there is sufficient control over the microscopic dynamics, so that an effective description can be derived for it without the need for extra assumptions or matching (in the effective field theory sense).
We present an exact solution in the large-
N limit of the Lévy Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (LSYK) model introduced in Ref. [1], wherein the couplings are drawn from a Lévy Stable distribution parameterized by a tail exponent
μ∈[0,2]. Starting from the Hamiltonian and its associated partition function, we highlight the key differences from the standard Gaussian SYK model and derive the large-
N Schwinger-Dyson equations via a bosonic oscillator representation of the action. These equations are solved both numerically and analytically in the large-
q and infrared limits. We subsequently analyze the chaotic properties of the model by computing the Krylov exponent from the large-
q Green's function and extracting the Lyapunov exponent from the
4-point function. The parameter
μ continuously interpolates between a free theory at
μ=0 and the conventional, maximally chaotic Gaussian SYK model at
μ=2, with non-maximal chaos persisting throughout the intermediate regime
0<μ<2. Thermodynamic quantities, including the entropy, free energy, average energy, and specific heat capacity, are computed and compared with their Gaussian SYK counterparts. The interpretations of the thermodynamics are discussed with respect to the holographic dual and non-Fermi liquid theory. Finally, we discuss an alternative representation of the LSYK model based on a distinct decomposition of the Lévy Stable distribution, which establishes a non-trivial connection to Gaussian SYK, and provide supporting analytical and numerical results in the appendices.