We demonstrate that the finite-temperature critical transverse-field Ising chain exhibits quantitative signatures of black-hole physics in its dual gravitational description within the AdS/CFT correspondence. Its finite-temperature dynamics and thermodynamics are consistently captured by a mixed thermal-AdS/BTZ black hole saddle, leading to three mutually compatible observations. First, antipodal excitation transport collapses onto a universal temperature-dependent curve determined by the relative AdS and BTZ contributions to the gravitational partition function, reflecting horizon absorption. Second, in the high-temperature regime, the retarded response exhibits exponential relaxation governed by the lowest quasi-normal mode of the dual black hole. Third, the temperature derivative of the von Neumann entropy develops a pronounced minimum at a temperature consistent with the Hawking-Page transition. These results identify critical quantum spin chains as minimal and experimentally accessible platforms for probing dynamical and thermodynamic aspects of quantum black holes in controllable many-body systems.
We demonstrate that the finite-temperature critical transverse-field Ising chain exhibits quantitative signatures of black-hole physics in its dual gravitational description within the AdS/CFT correspondence. Its finite-temperature dynamics and thermodynamics are consistently captured by a mixed thermal-AdS/BTZ black hole saddle, leading to three mutually compatible observations. First, antipodal excitation transport collapses onto a universal temperature-dependent curve determined by the relative AdS and BTZ contributions to the gravitational partition function, reflecting horizon absorption. Second, in the high-temperature regime, the retarded response exhibits exponential relaxation governed by the lowest quasi-normal mode of the dual black hole. Third, the temperature derivative of the von Neumann entropy develops a pronounced minimum at a temperature consistent with the Hawking-Page transition. These results identify critical quantum spin chains as minimal and experimentally accessible platforms for probing dynamical and thermodynamic aspects of quantum black holes in controllable many-body systems.
Many condensed matter experiments explore the finite temperature dynamics of systems near quantum critical points. Often, there are no well-defined quasiparticle excitations, and so quantum kinetic equations do not describe the transport properties completely. The theory shows that the transport coefficients are not proportional to a mean free scattering time (as is the case in the Boltzmann theory of quasiparticles), but are completely determined by the absolute temperature and by equilibrium thermodynamic observables. Recently, explicit solutions of this quantum critical dynamics have become possible via the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory duality discovered in string theory. This shows that the quantum critical theory provides a holographic description of the quantum theory of black holes in a negatively curved anti-de Sitter space, and relates its transport coefficients to properties of the Hawking radiation from the black hole. We review how insights from this connection have led to new results for experimental systems: (i) the vicinity of the superfluid-insulator transition in the presence of an applied magnetic field, and its possible application to measurements of the Nernst effect in the cuprates, (ii) the magnetohydrodynamics of the plasma of Dirac electrons in graphene and the prediction of a hydrodynamic cyclotron resonance.
The relationship between Bekenstein-Hawking and entanglement entropy is one \nof the most intriguing problems of black hole and theoretical physics. Although both entropies have the same geometric characterization (they scale as an area), they have a different origin. The Bekenstein-Hawking entropy has it’s roots in the thermal correlations whereas the entanglement entropy describes the quantum correlations. In this thesis we address this problem from a holographic \nperspective, making large use of the AdS/CFT correspondence. \nWe first look at the BTZ black hole in which case the black hole horizon and \nthe conical singularity are related to each other. Using the modular transformations of the dual 2D CFT, we first obtain an expression of the holographicentanglement entropy for the Euclidean BTZ black hole, AdS3 vacua and conical singularity and then analyse the behaviour of the leading terms in the expansions of the holographic entanglement entropy for the BTZ black hole and the \nconical singularity. From these calculations, we have extracted the “signatures” through which entanglement entropy differentiates between the horizon and the conical singularity. When we deal with CFT at a finite temperature then it is well known that, entanglement entropy fails as a measure and hence it is replaced by entanglement negativity which is able to separate the thermal/classical \ncorrelations from the quantum correlations thereby capturing “distillable” entanglement. We address the problem of finding a suitable holographic prescription \nto calculate the entanglement negativity for two adjacent intervals when the CFT is at a finite temperature and in turn dual to a black hole in the bulk. We first propose a conjecture for the holographic entanglement negativity for two adjacent intervals in the \nAdS3/CFT2 setup and perform calculations in the \nvarious cases to support this conjecture. We further push forward the validity of this conjecture by calculating the holographic entanglement negativity for two \nadjacent subsystems when we have RN-AdS black holes in the bulk which in \nturn are dual to CFT with a conserved charge.
We study entanglement transfer in a minimal model of two qubits that are coupled with one another through an antiferromagnetic Heisenberg exchange (J~), and where one of them is additionally coupled to a fermionic environment through another antiferromagnetic Heisenberg exchange (JK). By tuning the coupling ratio JK/J~, the system undergoes a quantum phase transition at T=0, accompanied by a redistribution of entanglement from the d′−d qubit-subsystem to the environment. Remarkably, the resulting physics exhibits properties that bear analogy with a quantum-information theoretic perspective of the physics of black hole thermodynamics. Carefully selected bipartite and tripartite mutual information measures displays behaviour analogous to the dynamical evolution of black hole entropy, Hawking entropy, and the Page curve expected during the process of evaporation. An effective temperature scale is obtained from the variation of the ground state energy with respect to changes in the bipartite mutual information between the subsystem and the bath. A steady growth of this temperature with the coupling ratio resembles that of the Hawking temperature with the inverse mass of the black hole. Concomitantly, the emergence of non-Fermi liquid behaviour observed near the quantum critical point and in the strong-coupling phase resembles strange-metal-like physics expected near the event horizon from a holographic duality perspective. Our results establish the minimal model as a platform for studying entanglement transfer and information scrambling within a fully unitary quantum framework, and offer new insights into a resolution of the black hole information paradox.
This dissertation presents a comprehensive investigation of fermionic quantum matter into the intricate relationship between quantum chaos, thermalization, and their connection to gravitational duals, with particular emphasis on the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model and its extensions. Through an integrated approach combining analytical solutions in the large-N limit with advanced numerical techniques, we explore fundamental questions in quantum many-body physics, including the interplay of chaos and ergodicity, universal transport in non-Fermi liquids, and the role of gravitational analogs in strongly correlated systems. We first demonstrate that coupled SYK lattices evade instantaneous thermalization despite weak charge fluctuations, governed by a discrete wave equation dependent solely on hopping strength, independent of on-site interactions. Thermodynamically, coupled SYK models exhibit critical exponents universal to van der Waals fluids and AdS black holes, yet diverge from the Hawking-Page transition at ultralow temperatures, revealing a continuum of first-order phase transitions. They simultaneously retain the quantum chaotic properties of both a single-dot SYK model and black holes. In extended SYK chains, we identify a universal DC conductivity bound across interaction regimes, identifying crossovers between insulating, Fermi liquid, strange metal, and bad metal phases with signatures of holographic insulator behavior. Quench dynamics in mixed SYK systems reveal rapid thermalization without prethermal plateaus, enabling direct observation of thermalization in closed quantum systems in the thermodynamic limit. To diagnose ergodicity-breaking, we introduce the Krylov variance, a probe of operator localization in Krylov space, validated through mass-deformed SYK and quantum East models. Finally, we uncover Page curve entanglement dynamics and temporal quantum phase transitions in entanglement Hamiltonians of interacting fermionic chains, where symmetry-sector crossings highlight limitations of perturbative calculations performed around initial times, such as in Hawking’s analysis of black hole evaporation. We provide a condensed matter analog of the holographic “island formula” — a mechanism invoking quantum extremal surfaces to resolve the black hole information paradox. Methodologically, this work integrates large-N-type expansions, Keldysh contour techniques, and numerical methods to bridge condensed matter physics, quantum information, and gravitational duality. The results establish SYK-type systems as a universal framework for studying non-Fermi liquids, quantum criticality, and black hole analogs, while paving the way for exploring bosonic extensions and generalizations to open quantum systems.
Quantum phase transition arises in general as second order phase transition at zero temperature, tuned by a non-thermal parameter such as pressure, doping or a magnetic field. The point in the phase diagram of the material in which different phases meet is called a quantum critical point (QCP). Physics around QCPs are of extensive current interest because the critical quantum fluctuations influence the physical properties in a wide temperature range (quantum criticality), and are believed to be responsible for many emergent physical properties such as non-Fermi liquids and unconventional superconductivity. In this research we explore dynamics and thermodynamics near QCPs via investigating three classes of models, which all have real material correspondence. Specifically first, we study local dynamics in a perturbed quantum critical Ising chain with E8 symmetry, where we show the local dynamical spin susceptibility has a singular dependence on frequency, but differs from the diffusion form. The nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation rate at low temperatures depends exponentially on the inverse temperature, whose prefactor we also determine. We propose NMR experiments as a means to further test the applicability of the E8 description for CoNb2O6. Second, we investigate the thermodynamic properties of itinerant ferromagnets near quantum critical points, described by the quantum Landau-Ginzburg theory. We provide a regularized perturbative renormalization group procedure to calculate the free energy. We further carry out numerical calculations on thermodynamic quantities, capturing not only the leading critical behaviors, but also the subleading and nonsingular contributions. We demonstrate various thermodynamic signatures of quantum criticality, including the entropy accumulation effect and the divergence of the specific heat coefficient. A detailed comparison to the recent experimental results on an itinerant ferromagnet Sr3Ru2O7 is also presented. Third, we explore Ising-nematic and magnetic phases and their transitions in iso-electronically doped iron pnictides by carrying out a large-N study of an effective low-energy Ginzburg-Landau model for these systems. We demonstrate that the magnetic and Ising orders transitions are concurrent at zero temperature, and both transitions are weakly first-order, which is consistent with RG-based prediction and experimental observations.