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arXiv:2607.01930

Tuning quantum magic of pure quantum chaotic states with a gravity dual

Antonio M. García-García, Xianlong Liu, Jie-ping Zheng

hep-thquant-phSubmitted Jul 2, 2026• Announced Jul 3, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Quantum magic is a fundamental resource that quantifies to what extent quantum states can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer. We study it for states constructed from the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) Hamiltonian with $N$ Majoranas by the fermionic anti-flatness (FAF). We show analytically that, in the large $N$ limit, the quantum magic of pure Kourkoulou-Maldacena (KM) states, dual to a quantum black hole with an end-of-world particle behind the horizon, is linear in $N$ with a slope, depending on the black hole temperature, that can be tuned between zero and $1/2$. By contrast, the FAF of Gaussian states evolved in real time with the SYK Hamitonian approaches $\approx N/2$ exponentially at a rate given by a multiple of the leading Ruelle-Pollicot resonance. Subleading corrections in $N$ for SYK energy eigenstates, computed numerically for $N \leq 54$ by combining Krylov subspace with GPU acceleration techniques, decay exponentially with $N$, but power-law if the SYK couplings are sparsified, and are order of magnitude larger for states close to the ground state, a region with an established gravity analogue. Our results offer new insights about the relation between quantum information, quantum chaos and low-dimension quantum gravity.

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6 + 2 pages, 5 figures

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Quantum magic is a fundamental resource that quantifies to what extent quantum states can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer. We study it for states constructed from the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) Hamiltonian with NNN Majoranas by the fermionic anti-flatness (FAF). We show analytically that, in the large NNN limit, the quantum magic of pure Kourkoulou-Maldacena (KM) states, dual to a quantum black hole with an end-of-world particle behind the horizon, is linear in NNN with a slope, depending on the black hole temperature, that can be tuned between zero and 1/21/21/2. By contrast, the FAF of Gaussian states evolved in real time with the SYK Hamitonian approaches ≈N/2\approx N/2≈N/2 exponentially at a rate given by a multiple of the leading Ruelle-Pollicot resonance. Subleading corrections in NNN for SYK energy eigenstates, computed numerically for N≤54N \leq 54N≤54 by combining Krylov subspace with GPU acceleration techniques, decay exponentially with NNN, but power-law if the SYK couplings are sparsified, and are order of magnitude larger for states close to the ground state, a region with an established gravity analogue. Our results offer new insights about the relation between quantum information, quantum chaos and low-dimension quantum gravity.
Any quantum state is fully specified by the expectation values of a complete set of Hermitian operators. For a system of Majorana fermions, such as the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, this set of observables can be taken to be all possible strings of Majorana fermion operators. The expectation values of these fermion strings in a thermal state depend erratically on the microscopic couplings that specify the SYK Hamiltonian, and we study their statistical properties directly in the thermodynamic limit using path integral techniques. When the underlying SYK Hamiltonian is chaotic, we find that these expectation values are well-modeled as real Gaussian random variables with zero mean and a variance that we compute. In contrast, for the integrable variant of SYK, we find that the expectation values are actually non-Gaussian. We then use these results to study measures of magic in the SYK thermal state, including the robustness of magic and the stabilizer Rényi entropy. We also show that our results can be quantitatively reproduced with a dual gravity calculation in the chaotic case at sufficiently low temperature. In this dual gravity model the variance of a given microscopic operator string is related to a wormhole geometry stabilized by a massive particle which is dual to the operator string. Our results thus provide a concrete and quantitative setting in which to study the relationship between randomness, wormholes and closed universes, as well as a holographic dual of quantum magic.
We suggest that the holographic principle, combined with recent technological advances in atomic, molecular, and optical physics, can lead to experimental studies of quantum gravity. As a specific example, we consider the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev (SYK) model, which consists of spin-polarized fermions with an all-to-all complex random two-body hopping and has been conjectured to be dual to a certain quantum-gravitational system. Achieving low-temperature states of the SYK model is interpreted as a realization of a stringy black hole, provided that the holographic duality is true. We introduce a variant of the SYK model, in which the random two-body hopping is real. This model is equivalent to the original SYK model in the large-|NNN| limit. We show that this model can be created in principle by confining ultracold fermionic atoms into optical lattices and coupling two atoms with molecular states via photo-association lasers. This development serves as an important first step towards an experimental realization of such systems dual to quantum black holes. We also show how to measure out-of-time-order correlation functions of the SYK model, which allow for identifying the maximally chaotic property of the black hole.
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.
It has been recently proposed by Maldacena and Qi that an eternal traversable wormhole in a two-dimensional anti--de Sitter space is the gravity dual of the low temperature limit of two Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models coupled by a relevant interaction (which we will refer to as spin operator). We study spectral and eigenstate properties of this coupled SYK model. We find that level statistics in the tail of the spectrum, and for a sufficiently weak coupling, show substantial deviations from random matrix theory, which suggests that traversable wormholes are not quantum chaotic. By contrast, for sufficiently strong coupling, corresponding to the black hole phase, level statistics are well described by random matrix theory. This transition in level statistics coincides approximately with a previously reported Hawking-Page transition for weak coupling. We show explicitly that this thermodynamic transition turns into a sharp crossover as the coupling increases. Likewise, this critical coupling also corresponds to the one at which the overlap between the ground state and the thermofield double state (TFD) is smallest. In the range of sizes we can reach by exact diagonalization, the ground state is well approximated by the TFD only in the strong coupling limit. This is due to the fact that the ground state is close to the eigenstate of the spin operator corresponding to the lowest eigenvalue which is an exact TFD at infinite temperature. In this region, the spectral density is separated into blobs centered around the eigenvalues of the spin operator. For weaker couplings, the exponential decay of coefficients in a tensor product basis, typical of the TFD, becomes power law. Finally, we also find that the total Hamiltonian has an additional discrete symmetry which has not been reported previously.
We study the Wishart-Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (WSYK) model consisting of two q^\hat{q}q^​-body Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models with general complex couplings, one the complex conjugate of the other, living in off-diagonal blocks of a larger WSYK Hamiltonian. In the limit of large number NNN of Majoranas and q^∝N\hat{q} \propto \sqrt Nq^​∝N​, we employ diagrammatic and combinatorial techniques to show that the spectral density of the model can be approximated by the weight function of the Al-Salam-Chihara Q-Laguerre polynomials. For q^=2,3,4\hat{q} = 2, 3, 4q^​=2,3,4, the analytical spectral density, with Q=Q(q^,N)Q=Q(\hat{q},N)Q=Q(q^​,N) computed analytically, agrees well with numerical results obtained by exact diagonalization. The spectrum is positive with a hard edge at zero energy and, for odd q^\hat{q}q^​, low-energy excitations grow as a stretched exponential, though the functional form is different from that of the supersymmetric SYK model. The microscopic spectral density and level statistics close to the hard edge are very well approximated by that of an ensemble of random matrices belonging to non-standard universality classes, which indicates quantum chaotic dynamics.
Quantum chaos is one of the distinctive features of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, N Majorana fermions in 0+1 dimensions with infinite-range two-body interactions, which is attracting a lot of interest as a toy model for holography. Here we show analytically and numerically that a generalized SYK model with an additional one-body infinite-range random interaction, which is a relevant perturbation in the infrared, is still quantum chaotic and retains most of its holographic features for a fixed value of the perturbation and sufficiently high temperature. However, a chaotic-integrable transition, characterized by the vanishing of the Lyapunov exponent and spectral correlations given by Poisson statistics, occurs at a temperature that depends on the strength of the perturbation. We speculate about the gravity dual of this transition.