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arXiv:2502.04152 · Physical Review X

Leading and Beyond Leading-Order Spectral Form Factor in Chaotic Quantum Many-Body Systems Across All Dyson Symmetry Classes

V. Kumar, Tomaž Prosen, Dibyendu Roy

Published May 21, 2026• 1 citation
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Abstract

We show the emergence of random matrix theory (RMT) spectral correlations in the chaotic phase of generic, periodically kicked, interacting, quantum many-body systems by analytically calculating the spectral form factor (SFF), K ( t ) , up to two leading orders in time, t . We explicitly consider the presence or absence of time-reversal ( T ) symmetry to investigate all three Dyson symmetry classes, namely, the circular orthogonal ensemble (COE) for T -invariant systems with T 2 = 1 , the circular unitary ensemble (CUE) in the absence of T symmetry, and the circular symplectic ensemble (CSE) for T -invariant systems with T 2 = − 1 . Our derivation applies the random phase approximation to perform ensemble averages, and we give its justification for generic many-body interactions. We express the SFF as a sum of contributions of certain diagrams. While the number of diagrams that contribute to the SFF in the first and second orders in t for the COE and CUE classes is finite, the number of such diagrams is exponentially large in t for the CSE class. Thus, we have developed a new diagrammatic technique that uses reduced diagrams to incorporate contributions from many diagrams. For the COE class, we show that beyond Thouless time t * , the SFF takes the form K ( t ) ≃ 2 t − 2 t 2 / N up to second order in time, where N is the Hilbert space dimension. For the CUE class, we show that K ( t ) ≃ t beyond t * , and there is no universal term in the second order, unlike the COE case. For the CSE class, we show that K ( t ) ≃ 2 t + 2 t 2 / N up to two orders in time beyond t * . The above findings of the SFF up to second order in time are in agreement with the RMT predictions for these classes. In all three cases, the scaling of t * with system size L is determined by the eigenvalues of a doubly stochastic matrix M . For strongly interacting fermionic chains, M is S U ( 2 ) invariant in all three cases, leading to t * ∝ L 2 in the presence of U ( 1 ) symmetry. In the absence of U ( 1 ) symmetry, we find t *

DOI
10.1103/kwh6-hncn

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We numerically study the spectral statistics of open quantum many-body systems (OQMBS) as signatures of quantum chaos (or the lack thereof), using the dissipative spectral form factor (DSFF), a generalization of the spectral form factor to complex spectra. We show that the DSFF of chaotic OQMBS generically displays the quadratic\textit{quadratic}quadratic ramp-plateau behaviour of the Ginibre ensemble from random matrix theory, in contrast to the linear ramp-plateau behaviour of the Gaussian ensemble in closed quantum systems. Furthermore, in the presence of many-body interactions, such RMT behaviour emerges only after a time scale τdevτ_{\mathrm{dev}}τdev​, which generally increases with system size for sufficiently large system size, and can be identified as the non-Hermitian analogue of the many-body Thouless time\textit{many-body Thouless time}many-body Thouless time. The universality of the random matrix theory behavior is demonstrated by surveying twelve models of OQMBS, including random Kraus circuits (quantum channels) and random Lindbladians (Liouvillians) in several symmetry classes, as well as Lindbladians of paradigmatic models such as the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK), XXZ, and the transverse field Ising models. We devise an unfolding and filtering procedure to remove variations of the averaged density of states which would otherwise hide the universal RMT-like signatures in the DSFF for chaotic OQMBS. Beyond chaotic OQMBS, we study the spectral statistics of non-chaotic OQMBS, specifically the integrable XX model and a system in the many-body localized (MBL) regime in the presence of dissipation, which exhibit DSFF behaviours distinct from the ramp-plateau behaviour of random matrix theory. Lastly, we study the DSFF of Lindbladians with the Hamiltonian term set to zero, i.e. only the jump operators are present, and demonstrate that the results of RMT universality and scaling of many-body Thouless time survive even without coherent evolution.
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