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arXiv:2212.03265 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Quantum chaos and phase transition in the Yukawa–Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model

Andrew Davis, Yuxuan Wang

Published May 11, 2023• 14 citations
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Abstract

We analyze the relation between quantum chaotic behavior and phase transitions of the Yukawa--Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model as a function of filling and temperature, which describes random Yukawa interactions between $N$ complex fermions and $M$ bosons in zero spatial dimensions for both the non-Fermi liquid and insulating states at finite temperature and chemical potential. We solve the ladder equations for the out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) for both bosons and fermions. Despite the appearance of the chemical potential in the Hamiltonian, which explicitly introduces an additional energy scale, the OTOCs for the fermions and bosons in the non-Fermi liquid state turn out to be unaffected, and the Lyapunov exponents that diagnose chaos remain maximal. As the chemical potential increases, the system is known to experience a first-order transition from a critical phase to a gapped insulating phase. We postulate that the boundary of the region in parameter space where each phase is (meta)stable coincides with the curve on which the Lyapunov exponent is maximal. By calculating the exponent in the insulating phase and comparing to numerical results on the boundaries of stability, we show that this is plausible.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.107.205122

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We analyze the relation between quantum chaotic behavior and phase transitions of the Yukawa--Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model as a function of filling and temperature, which describes random Yukawa interactions between NNN complex fermions and MMM bosons in zero spatial dimensions for both the non-Fermi liquid and insulating states at finite temperature and chemical potential. We solve the ladder equations for the out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) for both bosons and fermions. Despite the appearance of the chemical potential in the Hamiltonian, which explicitly introduces an additional energy scale, the OTOCs for the fermions and bosons in the non-Fermi liquid state turn out to be unaffected, and the Lyapunov exponents that diagnose chaos remain maximal. As the chemical potential increases, the system is known to experience a first-order transition from a critical phase to a gapped insulating phase. We postulate that the boundary of the region in parameter space where each phase is (meta)stable coincides with the curve on which the Lyapunov exponent is maximal. By calculating the exponent in the insulating phase and comparing to numerical results on the boundaries of stability, we show that this is plausible.
We analyze the phase diagram of the spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ Yukawa--Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, which describes complex spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ fermions randomly interacting with real bosons via a Yukawa coupling, at finite temperatures and varying fermion density. A recent work [Wang and Chubukov, Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 033084 (2020).] showed that, upon varying the filling or chemical potential, a first-order quantum phase transition exists between a non-Fermi-liquid (NFL) phase and an insulating phase. Here we show that in such a model with time-reversal symmetry this quantum phase transition is preempted by a pairing phase that develops as a low-temperature instability. As a remnant of the would-be NFL-insulator transition, the superconducting critical temperature rapidly decreases beyond a certain chemical potential. On the other hand, depending on the parameters, the first-order quantum phase transition extends to finite temperatures and terminates at a thermal critical point, beyond which the NFL and the insulator become the same phase, similar to that of the liquid-gas and metal-insulator transition in real materials. We determine the pairing phase boundary and the location of the thermal critical point via combined analytic and quantum Monte Carlo numeric efforts. Our results provide a model realization of the transition of NFLs towards superconductivity and insulating states and therefore offer a controlled platform for future investigations of the generic phase diagram that hosts a NFL, insulator, and superconductor and their phase transitions.
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