Abstract In this work, we study the information scrambling and the entanglement dynamics in the complex Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (cBSYK) models, focusing on their dependence on the charge density n. We first derive the effective theory for scramblons in a single cBSYK model, which gives closed-form expressions for the late-time OTOC and operator size. In particular, the result for OTOC is consistent with numerical observations in [1]. We then study the entanglement dynamics in cBSYK chains. We derive the density dependence of the entanglement velocity for both Rényi entropies and the Von Neumann entropy, with a comparison to the butterfly velocity. We further consider adding repeated measurements and derive the effective theory of the measurement induced transition which shows U(2)L ⊗ U(2)R symmetry for non-interacting models.
Abstract In this work, we study the information scrambling and the entanglement dynamics in the complex Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (cBSYK) models, focusing on their dependence on the charge density n. We first derive the effective theory for scramblons in a single cBSYK model, which gives closed-form expressions for the late-time OTOC and operator size. In particular, the result for OTOC is consistent with numerical observations in [1]. We then study the entanglement dynamics in cBSYK chains. We derive the density dependence of the entanglement velocity for both Rényi entropies and the Von Neumann entropy, with a comparison to the butterfly velocity. We further consider adding repeated measurements and derive the effective theory of the measurement induced transition which shows U(2)L ⊗ U(2)R symmetry for non-interacting models.
Information scrambling is a hallmark of quantum chaos and thermalization in isolated quantum many-body systems. We investigate scrambling dynamics in the all-to-all interacting spin Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK)-q model using both pure- and mixed-state entanglement measures. We show that von-Neumann and Rényi entropies exhibit rapid growth followed by saturation near Haar-random values, signaling efficient scrambling. The scrambling rate reveals a nontrivial dependence on the interaction order, system size, and Hamiltonian scaling. We further employ mixed-state entanglement as a powerful probe of information scrambling. We numerically find a universal relation between the Rényi-1/2 mutual information and entanglement negativity for minimal interaction order in the early growth regime. Furthermore, entanglement negativity displays a Page-curve-like behavior under unequal subsystem partitioning, characterized by the birth, spread, and eventual death of quantum correlations. Our results provide a generic description of information scrambling using entanglement dynamics in all-to-all interacting spin systems with multi-body interactions.
Abstract In generic closed quantum systems, the complexity of operators increases under time evolution governed by the Heisenberg equation, reflecting the scrambling of local quantum information. However, when systems interact with an external environment, the system-environment coupling allows operators to escape from the system, inducing a dynamical transition between the scrambling phase and the dissipative phase. This transition is known as the environment-induced information scrambling transition, originally proposed in Majorana fermion systems. In this work, we advance this discovery by investigating the transition in charge-conserved systems with space-time randomness. We construct solvable Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models of complex fermions coupled to an environment, enabling the analytical computation of operator growth. We determine the critical dissipation strength, which is proportional to n(1−n) n ( 1 - n ) with n being the density of the complex fermions, arising from the suppression in the quantum Lyapunova exponent due to the Pauli blockade in the scattering process. We further analyze the density dependence of maximally scrambled operators at late time. Our results shed light on the intriguing interplay between information scrambling, dissipation, and conservation laws.
The growth of information scrambling, captured by out-of-time-order correlation functions (OTOCs), is a central indicator of the nature of many-body quantum dynamics. Here, we compute analytically the complete time dependence of the OTOC for an integrable Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, N Majoranas with random two-body interactions of infinite range, coupled to a Markovian bath at finite temperature. In the limit of no coupling to the bath, the time evolution of scrambling experiences different stages. For t≲sqrt[N], after an initial polynomial growth, the OTOC approaches saturation in a power-law fashion with oscillations superimposed. At t∼sqrt[N], the OTOC reverses trend and starts to decrease linearly in time. The reason for this linear decrease is that, despite being a subleading 1/N effect, the OTOC in this region is governed by the spectral form factor of the antisymmetric couplings of the SYK model. The linear decrease stops at t∼2N, the Heisenberg time, where saturation occurs. The effect of the environment is an overall exponential decay of the OTOC for times longer than the inverse of the coupling strength to the bath. The oscillations at t≲sqrt[N] indicate lack of thermalization-a desired feature for better performance of quantum information devices.
This work develops tools to understand how quantum information spreads, scrambles, and is reshaped by measurements in many-body systems. First, I study scrambling and pseudorandomness in the Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, quantifying pseudorandomness using unitary k-designs and frame potentials. Using Keldysh path integrals with replicas and disorder averaging, I obtain analytic control of the approach to randomness, identify collective modes that delay convergence to Haar-like behavior, and estimate design times as functions of model parameters, clarifying links between scrambling, complexity growth, and random-circuit phenomenology. Second, I construct a field theory for weakly measured SYK clusters. Starting from a system-ancilla description and a continuum monitoring limit, and using fermionic coherent states with replicas and disorder averaging, I derive a nonlinear sigma model that captures measurement back-action and the competition between interaction-induced scrambling and information extraction, predicting characteristic crossover scales and response signatures that distinguish weak monitoring from fully unitary evolution. Third, I develop a strong-disorder renormalization group for measurement-only SYK clusters, based on the SO(2n) replica algebra and Dasgupta-Ma decimation rules. The flow shows features reminiscent of infinite-randomness behavior, but an order-of-limits subtlety renders the leading recursions non-robust, so the analytic evidence for an infinite-randomness fixed point is inconclusive, even though the average second Renyi entropy displays logarithmic scaling. Together, these results provide a unified language to diagnose when many-body dynamics generate operational randomness and how measurements redirect that flow.
The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model attracts attention in the context of information scrambling, which represents delocalization of quantum information and is quantified by the out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOC). The SYK model contains N fermions with disordered and four-body interactions. Here, we introduce a variant of the SYK model, which we refer to as the Wishart SYK model. We investigate the Wishart SYK model for complex fermions and that for hard-core bosons. We show that the ground state of the Wishart SYK model is massively degenerate and the residual entropy is extensive, and that the Wishart SYK model for complex fermions is integrable. In addition, we numerically investigate the OTOC and level statistics of the SYK models. At late times, the OTOC of the fermionic Wishart SYK model exhibits large temporal fluctuations, in contrast with smooth scrambling in the original SYK model. We argue that the large temporal fluctuations of the OTOC are a consequence of a small effective dimension of the initial state. We also show that the level statistics of the fermionic Wishart SYK model is in agreement with the Poisson distribution, while the bosonic Wishart SYK model obeys the gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE) or the gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE) distribution.
Understanding how quantum chaotic systems generate entanglement can provide insight into their microscopic chaotic dynamics and can help distinguish between different classes of chaotic behavior. Using von Neumann entanglement entropy, we study a nonentangled state evolved under three variants of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model with a finite number of Majorana fermions N. All the variants exhibit linear entanglement growth at early times, which at late times saturates to a universal value consistent with random matrix theory (RMT), but their growth rates differ. We interpret this as a large-N effect, arising from the enhanced nonlocality of fermionic operators in SYK and binary SYK, absent in spin operators of the spin-SYK model. Numerically, we find that these differences emerge gradually with increasing N. Although all variants are quantum chaotic, their entanglement dynamics reflect varying scrambling rates and indicate that the entanglement production rate serves as a fine-grained probe of scrambling beyond conventional measures. To probe its effect on the thermalization properties of these models, we study the two-point autocorrelation function, finding no differences between the SYK variants, but deviations from RMT predictions for N≥24, particularly near the crossover from exponential decay to saturation regime.