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arXiv:2407.20569 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

Sparsity dependence of Krylov state complexity in the SYK model

Raghav G. Jha, Ranadeep Roy

Published Jul 30, 2025• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the Krylov state complexity of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model for N ≤ 28 Majorana fermions with q -body fermion interaction with q = 4 , 6, 8 for a range of sparse parameter k that controls the number of remaining terms in the original SYK model after sparsification. The critical value of k below which the model ceases to be holographic, denoted k c , has been subject of several recent investigations. Using Krylov complexity as a probe, we find that the peak value of complexity does not change as we increase k beyond k ≥ k min at large temperatures. We argue that this behavior is related to the change in the holographic nature of the Hamiltonian in the sparse SYK-type models such that the model is holographic for all k ≥ k min ≈ k c . Our results provide a novel way to determine k c in SYK-type models.

DOI
10.1103/qsyk-m3sg

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We study the Krylov state complexity of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model for N ≤ 28 Majorana fermions with q -body fermion interaction with q = 4 , 6, 8 for a range of sparse parameter k that controls the number of remaining terms in the original SYK model after sparsification. The critical value of k below which the model ceases to be holographic, denoted k c , has been subject of several recent investigations. Using Krylov complexity as a probe, we find that the peak value of complexity does not change as we increase k beyond k ≥ k min at large temperatures. We argue that this behavior is related to the change in the holographic nature of the Hamiltonian in the sparse SYK-type models such that the model is holographic for all k ≥ k min ≈ k c . Our results provide a novel way to determine k c in SYK-type models.
Abstract We investigate two sparse Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) systems coupled by a bilinear term as a holographic quantum mechanical description of an eternal traversable wormhole in the low temperature limit. Each SYK system consists of N Majorana fermions coupled by random q-body interactions. The degree of sparseness is captured by a regular hypergraph in such a way that the Hamiltonian contains exactly k N independent terms. We improve on the theoretical understanding of the sparseness property by using known measures of hypergraph expansion. We show that the sparse version of the two coupled SYK model is gapped with a ground state close to a thermofield double state. Using Krylov subspace and parallelization techniques, we simulate the system for q = 4 and q = 8. The sparsity of the model allows us to explore larger values of N than the ones existing in the literature for the all-to-all SYK. We analyze in detail the two-point functions and the transmission amplitude of signals between the two systems. We identify a range of parameters where revivals obey the scaling predicted by holography and signals can be interpreted as traversing the wormhole.
The saturation of a recently proposed universal bound on the Lyapunov exponent has been conjectured to signal the existence of a gravity dual. This saturation occurs in the low-temperature limit of the dense Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, N Majorana fermions with q body (q>2) infinite-range interactions. We calculate certain out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) for N≤64 fermions for a highly sparse SYK model and find no significant dependence of the Lyapunov exponent on sparsity up to near the percolation limit where the Hamiltonian breaks up into blocks. This provides strong support to the saturation of the Lyapunov exponent in the low-temperature limit of the sparse SYK. A key ingredient to reaching N=64 is the development of a novel quantum spin model simulation library that implements highly optimized matrix-free Krylov subspace methods on graphical processing units. This leads to a significantly lower simulation time as well as vastly reduced memory usage over previous approaches, while using modest computational resources. Strong sparsity-driven statistical fluctuations require both the use of a much larger number of disorder realizations with respect to the dense limit and a careful finite size scaling analysis. The saturation of the bound in the sparse SYK points to the existence of a gravity analog that would enlarge substantially the number of field theories with this feature.
We study a sparse version of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model defined on random hypergraphs constructed either by a random pruning procedure or by randomly sampling regular hypergraphs. The resulting model has a new parameter, kkk, defined as the ratio of the number of terms in the Hamiltonian to the number of degrees of freedom, with the sparse limit corresponding to the thermodynamic limit at fixed kkk. We argue that this sparse SYK model recovers the interesting global physics of ordinary SYK even when kkk is of order unity. In particular, at low temperature the model exhibits a gravitational sector which is maximally chaotic. Our argument proceeds by constructing a path integral for the sparse model which reproduces the conventional SYK path integral plus gapped fluctuations. The sparsity of the model permits larger scale numerical calculations than previously possible, the results of which are consistent with the path integral analysis. Additionally, we show that the sparsity of the model considerably reduces the cost of quantum simulation algorithms. This makes the sparse SYK model the most efficient currently known route to simulate a holographic model of quantum gravity. We also define and study a sparse supersymmetric SYK model, with similar conclusions to the non-supersymmetric case. Looking forward, we argue that the class of models considered here constitute an interesting and relatively unexplored sparse frontier in quantum many-body physics.
The sparse version of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model reproduces essential features of the original SYK model while reducing the number of disorder parameters. In this Research Letter, we propose a further simplification of the model which we call the binary-coupling sparse SYK model. We set the nonzero couplings to be $\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}1$, rather than being sampled from a continuous distribution such as Gaussian. Remarkably, this simplification turns out to be an improvement: The binary-coupling model exhibits strong correlations in the spectrum, which is the important feature of the original SYK model that leads to the quick onset of the random-matrix universality, more efficiently in terms of the number of nonzero terms. This model is better suited for analog or digital quantum simulations of quantum chaotic behavior and holographic metals due to its simplicity and scaling properties.
A bstract In quantum field theories that admit gravity dual, specific inequalities involving entanglement entropy between arbitrary disjoint spatial regions hold. An example is the negativity of tripartite information. Inspired by this, we investigate the analogous entropy inequalities in Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) and sparse SYK models, which involve the entanglement among different flavors of Majorana fermions rather than spatial entanglement. Sparse SYK models are models where some of the SYK couplings are set to zero. Since these models have been argued to admit gravity duals up to a certain sparseness, it is interesting to see whether the multipartite entanglement structure changes in a sparseness-dependent manner. In the parameter space explored by our numerical analysis, which we performed upto five parties, we find that all entropy inequalities are satisfied for any temperature and degree of sparseness for an arbitrary choice of flavor subregions. In addition, if we plot the multipartite entanglement entropy in terms of purity, the only significant effect of sparseness is to change the range of purity. Thus, we conclude that multipartite information is almost unaffected by sparseness. As a counterexample, we also show that in a vector model of N -flavored Majorana fermions which contains no random variables, choices of subregions exist for which the entropy inequalities are violated.
The SYK model proposed by Sachdev, Ye, and Kitaev consists of Majorana fermions that interact randomly four at a time. The model develops a dense spectrum above the ground state, due to which the model becomes nearly conformal. This suggests that a holographic dual may exist, which makes the SYK model interesting in the study of quantum gravity. It has been found that the SYK model is similar to large NNN tensor models: in both models, only the melonic diagrams survive in the large NNN limit. In this thesis, we explore the large NNN tensor model with O(N)3O(N)^3O(N)3 symmetry containing two flavors of Majorana fermions in the fundamental representation. Its quartic Hamiltonian depends on a real parameter βββ. We derive the kernels of the four point functions. With the spectra that we find from the kernels, we calculate the scaling dimensions of several types of conformal primaries. We also find a duality relation between two Hamiltonians of different values of βββ. This is not a perfect duality, because the normalization of energy scales with the transformation. Nevertheless, the ratios of the energies are the same, and the operator dimensions are preserved. In addition, we discover that for β>1β> 1β>1 or β<0β< 0β<0 the scaling dimensions of one of the conformal primaries become complex, rendering the model unstable.