We use Krylov complexity as a typical diagnostic of quantum many body dynamics in the context of BMN matrix model at large mass gap. We calculate several physical entities, for example, the moments and return amplitudes at large mass deformation. We calculate them for both spread complexity of states as well as Krylov growth of operators in the matrix model. We propose a general expression for the moments at any given order $n$. We also discuss orthogonal polynomials for spread as well as operator Krylov complexity. In the context of the Krylov operator growth we further compute the spectral function and the density of states. A careful analysis of the spectral function near the resonance reveals various IR divergences in addition to the physical collective modes. These collective modes appear to be exceptionally stable due to large mass gap. On the other hand, the UV of the theory appears to be extremely damped due to higher scattering rates. We carefully diagnose these IR divergences near resonance which reveals that these collective modes are in fact non-propagating and should be thought of as diffusion modes or relaxation modes with infinite relaxation time. We also calculate the Krylov variance and Krylov entropy for the matrix model and in particular at early time. The linear early time growth of the Krylov entropy confirms the onset of quantum chaos in the matrix model at large mass gap.
We use Krylov complexity as a typical diagnostic of quantum many body dynamics in the context of BMN matrix model at large mass gap. We calculate several physical entities, for example, the moments and return amplitudes at large mass deformation. We calculate them for both spread complexity of states as well as Krylov growth of operators in the matrix model. We propose a general expression for the moments at any given order n. We also discuss orthogonal polynomials for spread as well as operator Krylov complexity. In the context of the Krylov operator growth we further compute the spectral function and the density of states. A careful analysis of the spectral function near the resonance reveals various IR divergences in addition to the physical collective modes. These collective modes appear to be exceptionally stable due to large mass gap. On the other hand, the UV of the theory appears to be extremely damped due to higher scattering rates. We carefully diagnose these IR divergences near resonance which reveals that these collective modes are in fact non-propagating and should be thought of as diffusion modes or relaxation modes with infinite relaxation time. We also calculate the Krylov variance and Krylov entropy for the matrix model and in particular at early time. The linear early time growth of the Krylov entropy confirms the onset of quantum chaos in the matrix model at large mass gap.
We study Krylov complexity in BMN Plane Wave Matrix Model at large mass deformation. We consider various consistent reductions of the matrix model that allow us to perform a Hamiltonian analysis which leads to different notions of the Krylov complexity. In the first part of the paper, we study the Krylov state complexity considering systematic reduction of N=3 and N=4 representations of the matrix model, which reveals a universal characteristic scaling for the Lanczos coefficients and fix them completely in terms of the mass deformation parameter. In the second part of the paper, we study the Krylov operator growth in the matrix model and compute the corresponding Lanczos coefficients. In both cases, we observe a \emph{linear} scaling of Lanczos coefficients with the mass parameter. The early time growth in Krylov complexity receives quadratic correction due to the presence of the massive deformation in the matrix model. Our analysis reveals that such massive corrections appear at same order in time for both the notion of the Krylov complexity.
A bstract Quantifying complexity in quantum systems has witnessed a surge of interest in recent years, with Krylov-based measures such as Krylov complexity ( C K ) and Spread complexity ( C S ) gaining prominence. In this study, we investigate their interplay by considering the complexity of states represented by density matrix operators . After setting up the problem, we analyze a handful of analytical and numerical examples spanning generic two-dimensional Hilbert spaces, qubit states, quantum harmonic oscillators, and random matrix theories, uncovering insightful relationships. For generic pure states, our analysis reveals two key findings: (I) a correspondence between moment-generating functions (of Lanczos coefficients) and survival amplitudes, and (II) an early-time equivalence between C K and 2 C S . Furthermore, for maximally entangled pure states, we find that the moment-generating function of C K becomes the Spectral Form Factor and, at late-times, C K is simply related to NC S for N ≥ 2 within the N -dimensional Hilbert space. Notably, we confirm that C K = 2 C S holds across all times when N = 2. Through the lens of random matrix theories, we also discuss deviations between complexities at intermediate times and highlight subtleties in the averaging approach at the level of the survival amplitude.
A central challenge in diagnosing quantum chaos is to distinguish genuine many-body scrambling from kinematic effects of the spectrum. Krylov state complexity, or spread complexity, has emerged as a powerful diagnostic, with its characteristic growth, peak, and relaxation often taken as signatures of chaos. However, previous work has shown that this criterion can give false positives: saddle-dominated integrable systems may display prominent peaks even without random-matrix level correlations. We argue, based on complementary numerical and analytical evidence, that this ambiguity can be resolved by unfolding the spectrum prior to constructing the ensuing Krylov dynamics. By removing the non-universal smooth density of states while retaining microscopic spectral correlations, unfolding suppresses spurious peaks in integrable systems while preserving the universal spectral signatures of chaotic systems. Analytically, the formulation of the Lanczos iteration in terms of orthogonal polynomials yields an exact complexity kernel with a robust near-diagonal structure whose fine-grained features reflect the underlying spectral correlations. Moreover, for the logarithmic model, unfolding can be performed exactly, mapping the spectrum to a uniform lattice and yielding an analytic spread complexity that removes the false-positive peak. These findings establish unfolded Krylov complexity as a more reliable probe of genuine many-body scrambling.
Krylov state complexity, or spread complexity, has emerged as a sharp and versatile diagnostic of quantum chaos, information spreading, and many-body dynamics. Built from the Lanczos algorithm and grounded in the optimal-basis theorem, Krylov complexity thereby provides a robust spectroscopic window into quantum dynamics. A central theme is the characteristic overshoot observed in chaotic systems: a complexity peak in which chaotic evolution drives the state deeper into the Krylov chain than in integrable systems before relaxing to equilibrium. This behavior, tied to random-matrix universality classes of spectral statistics, is illustrated across a broad range of models, including quantum billiards, quantum spin chains, and variants of the SYK model. We also discuss proposed holographic descriptions of Krylov complexity in Einstein gravity, and conclude by outlining future directions and open problems, including time-dependent systems and quantum-field-theoretic formulations. A Mathematica notebook is provided for numerical exploration of Krylov complexity and spectral statistics across models.
We investigate the dynamical behavior and spread complexity of quantum states within the mass-deformed BMN matrix model equipped with an emergent U(1) global charge at finite temperature β−1 and chemical potential ν. Focusing on the strong-coupling regime (μ≫1), we model the dynamics via a charged Thermofield Double (cTFD) state and trace the evolution of spread complexity across three distinct thermodynamic regimes. In the low-temperature gapped phase (βμ≫1), discrete mass-gap bound states dominate, trapping wavepacket dispersion and producing non-chaotic, oscillatory early-time growth. Conversely, in the high-temperature continuum phase (βμ≪1), thermal excitations overwhelm the mass gap, driving a transition to a continuous advection field that exhibits maximal chaotic scrambling with a Krylov Lyapunov exponent λK=π/β that saturates the universal bound. In the intermediate temperature regime (βμ∼1,βν∼1), the interplay between mass-gap bound states and the continuous thermal background induces a sub-leading correction to the Lanczos coefficients bn∼βπn+γn, governing a continuous sub-exponential crossover before full chaotic thermalization. Technical derivations regarding KMS boundary conditions, grand canonical spectral moments, residue analysis, and time-reversal symmetry breaking in Krylov space are detailed in four dedicated appendices.
Krylov complexity has recently emerged as a new paradigm to characterize quantum chaos in many-body systems. However, which features of Krylov complexity are a prerogative of quantum chaotic systems and how they relate to more standard probes, such as spectral statistics or out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs), remain open questions. Recent insights have revealed that in quantum chaotic systems Krylov state complexity exhibits a distinct peak during time evolution before settling into a well-understood late-time plateau. In this work we propose that this Krylov complexity peak (KCP) is a hallmark of quantum chaotic systems and suggest that its height could serve as an order parameter for quantum chaos. We demonstrate that the KCP effectively identifies chaotic-integrable transitions in two representative quantum-mechanical models at both infinite and finite temperature: the mass-deformed Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and the sparse Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. Our findings align with established results from spectral statistics and OTOCs while introducing an operator-independent diagnostic for quantum chaos, offering more universal insights and a deeper understanding of the general properties of quantum chaotic systems.