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arXiv:2608.27897

From integrability to many-body quantum chaos through a Markovian bath

Xianlong Liu, Antonio M. García-García

quant-phSubmitted Aug 28, 2026• Announced Aug 31, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Recent examples have confirmed the common belief that quantum chaos is always suppressed in the presence of an environment. Here we show that this is not always the case. We compute the Lyapunov exponent of a $q$-body Majorana Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model coupled to a Markovian bath. Provided that the jump operators describing the bath are isotropic random $k > 2$-body Majoranas fields, the Lyapunov exponent is positive for any strength of the coupling to the bath. Interestingly, this also applies to $q=2$ where the SYK is integrable which indicates that many-body quantum chaos can be induced by the environment. Moreover, for $q > 2$, where the unitary dynamics is quantum chaotic, and sufficiently large $k$, the Lyapunov exponent increases with the coupling to the bath. Explicit analytical results are obtained in the $q=2$ and large $q$ limits. Our results put forward an alternate route to induce and control the generation of scrambling in quantum many-body systems which is of potential relevance in the design of quantum information devices.

Comments
6+14 pages, 3+6 figures

Related papers

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It is intuitively expected, and supported by earlier studies, that many-body quantum chaos is suppressed, or even destroyed, by dissipative effects induced by continuous monitoring. We show here that this is not always the case. For this purpose, we study the quenched dynamics of a continuously monitored Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, described by the Lindblad formalism, coupled to a thermal environment modeled by another SYK maintained at constant temperature. We find that the combined effect of monitoring and the thermal bath drives the system toward a non-thermal steady state independently of the initial conditions. The corresponding retarded Green's function exhibits two stages of exponential decay, with rates that depend non-monotonously on the thermal bath coupling and the monitoring strength. In the limit of weak coupling, the late time decay of the Green's function, computed analytically, is closely related to that of the thermal bath. Strikingly, we identify a range of parameters in which continuous monitoring, despite being a source of decoherence, induces or enhances quantum chaotic dynamics suppressed by the thermal bath. For instance, in the limit of weak coupling to the thermal bath, the Lyapunov exponent increases sharply when monitoring is turned on. For intermediate values of the thermal bath coupling, the Lyapunov exponent exhibits re-entrant behavior: it vanishes at zero or sufficiently weak monitoring strength, and becomes positive again as the monitoring strength is increased. Our results offer intriguing insights on the mechanisms leading to quantum scrambling which paves the way to its experimental control and consequently to a performance enhancement of quantum information devices.

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In closed quantum systems, local information spreads throughout the entire system and becomes highly complex under unitary evolution. In contrast, when the system is embedded in an environment, system-environment coupling can transfer information from the system into the environment, thereby reducing the rate of complexity growth within the system. This leads to the environment-induced scrambling transition established in previous works. In this work, we identify entropy injection from the environment as a different physical process that instead enhances many-body chaos. Our setup consists of coupling a system that is already in equilibrium with one environment to another environment, which serves as an entropy reservoir and drives the system into a non-equilibrium state. When entropy flows into the system through either heat transfer or particle transfer, the effective Hilbert space explored by the system enlarges, a mechanism that can enhance many-body chaos. We explicitly demonstrate this idea by constructing a solvable complex Brownian SYK model, in which both the relaxation toward the steady state and the steady-state quantum Lyapunov exponent can be computed analytically. Our results provide a controllable mechanism for tuning quantum scrambling through entropy flow in quantum many-body systems coupled to environments.

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Recent examples have confirmed the common belief that quantum chaos is always suppressed in the presence of an environment. Here we show that this is not always the case. We compute the Lyapunov exponent of a qqq-body Majorana Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model coupled to a Markovian bath. Provided that the jump operators describing the bath are isotropic random k>2k > 2k>2-body Majoranas fields, the Lyapunov exponent is positive for any strength of the coupling to the bath. Interestingly, this also applies to q=2q=2q=2 where the SYK is integrable which indicates that many-body quantum chaos can be induced by the environment. Moreover, for q>2q > 2q>2, where the unitary dynamics is quantum chaotic, and sufficiently large kkk, the Lyapunov exponent increases with the coupling to the bath. Explicit analytical results are obtained in the q=2q=2q=2 and large qqq limits. Our results put forward an alternate route to induce and control the generation of scrambling in quantum many-body systems which is of potential relevance in the design of quantum information devices.
It is intuitively expected, and supported by earlier studies, that many-body quantum chaos is suppressed, or even destroyed, by dissipative effects induced by continuous monitoring. We show here that this is not always the case. For this purpose, we study the quenched dynamics of a continuously monitored Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, described by the Lindblad formalism, coupled to a thermal environment modeled by another SYK maintained at constant temperature. We find that the combined effect of monitoring and the thermal bath drives the system toward a non-thermal steady state independently of the initial conditions. The corresponding retarded Green's function exhibits two stages of exponential decay, with rates that depend non-monotonously on the thermal bath coupling and the monitoring strength. In the limit of weak coupling, the late time decay of the Green's function, computed analytically, is closely related to that of the thermal bath. Strikingly, we identify a range of parameters in which continuous monitoring, despite being a source of decoherence, induces or enhances quantum chaotic dynamics suppressed by the thermal bath. For instance, in the limit of weak coupling to the thermal bath, the Lyapunov exponent increases sharply when monitoring is turned on. For intermediate values of the thermal bath coupling, the Lyapunov exponent exhibits re-entrant behavior: it vanishes at zero or sufficiently weak monitoring strength, and becomes positive again as the monitoring strength is increased. Our results offer intriguing insights on the mechanisms leading to quantum scrambling which paves the way to its experimental control and consequently to a performance enhancement of quantum information devices.
In interacting quantum many-body systems, relaxation toward equilibrium reflects a competition between internal chaotic dynamics and environmental dissipation. While conventional Markovian baths typically produce exponential decay, non-Markovian dissipation can give rise to more intricate behavior, including algebraic relaxation. We study an open Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model coupled to a pseudogapped fermionic bath, using the Keldysh formalism to compute steady-state correlations in the large-NNN limit. Our results uncover a rich dynamical phase diagram, with regimes of bath-driven power-law relaxation, chaos-driven exponential decay, and an intermediate pre-relaxation phase where exponential decay crosses over to algebraic decay. These findings demonstrate that non-Markovian environments can qualitatively reshape relaxation mechanisms in strongly correlated quantum many-body systems.
A distinct feature of Hermitian quantum chaotic dynamics is the exponential increase of certain out-of-time-order correlation (OTOC) functions around the Ehrenfest time with a rate given by a Lyapunov exponent. Physically, the OTOCs describe the growth of quantum uncertainty that crucially depends on the nature of the quantum motion. Here, we employ the OTOC in order to provide a precise definition of dissipative quantum chaos. For this purpose, we compute analytically the Lyapunov exponent for the vectorized formulation of the large- q limit of a q -body Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model coupled to a Markovian bath. These analytic results are confirmed by an explicit numerical calculation of the Lyapunov exponent for several values of q ≥ 4 based on the solutions of the Schwinger-Dyson and Bethe-Salpeter equations. We show that the Lyapunov exponent decreases monotonically as the coupling to the bath increases and eventually becomes negative at a critical value of the coupling signaling a transition to a dynamics which is no longer quantum chaotic. Therefore, a positive Lyapunov exponent is a defining feature of dissipative many-body quantum chaos. The observation of the breaking of the exponential growth for sufficiently strong coupling suggests that dissipative quantum chaos may require in certain cases a sufficiently weak coupling to the environment. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Quantum chaos remains a challenging concept because classical signatures of chaos do not directly transfer to quantum systems. This thesis investigates which indicators of chaos are shared between classical and quantum mechanics and how they can be used to characterise non-integrable many-body systems. We examine ergodicity and thermalisation by means of the Eigenstate Thermalisation Hypothesis (ETH) as signatures of non-integrability, and study the Out-of-Time-Ordered Correlator (OTOC) as a probe of information scrambling and as a measure of sensitivity to initial conditions. We briefly discuss the appearance of chaotic wavefunctions and observations such as quantum scars and quantum ergodicity in individual eigenmodes of the Bunimovich stadium potential. Using the OTOC, we discuss extensions of the Lyapunov exponent to quantum systems and apply these ideas to the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev (SYK) model. In the large-N limit, and using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we find that the model might potentially be the dual of a black hole and that it is maximally chaotic. We conclude by discussing additional proposed signatures of quantum chaos and prospects for experimental realisations of the SYK model.
The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model describes Majorana fermions with random interaction, which displays many interesting properties such as non-Fermi liquid behavior, quantum chaos, emergent conformal symmetry and holographic duality. Here we consider a SYK model or a chain of SYK models with N Majorana fermion modes coupled to another SYK model with N 2 Majorana fermion modes, in which the latter has many more degrees of freedom and plays the role as a thermal bath. For a single SYK model coupled to the thermal bath, we show that although the Lyapunov exponent is still proportional to temperature, it monotonically decreases from 2π/β (β = 1/(k B T), T is temperature) to zero as the coupling strength to the thermal bath increases. For a chain of SYK models, when they are uniformly coupled to the thermal bath, we show that the butterfly velocity displays a crossover from a T \sqrt{T} T​ -dependence at relatively high temperature to a linear T-dependence at low temperature, with the crossover temperature also controlled by the coupling strength to the thermal bath. If only the end of the SYK chain is coupled to the thermal bath, the model can introduce a spatial dependence of both the Lyapunov exponent and the butterfly velocity. Our models provide canonical examples for the study of thermalization within chaotic models.
In closed quantum systems, local information spreads throughout the entire system and becomes highly complex under unitary evolution. In contrast, when the system is embedded in an environment, system-environment coupling can transfer information from the system into the environment, thereby reducing the rate of complexity growth within the system. This leads to the environment-induced scrambling transition established in previous works. In this work, we identify entropy injection from the environment as a different physical process that instead enhances many-body chaos. Our setup consists of coupling a system that is already in equilibrium with one environment to another environment, which serves as an entropy reservoir and drives the system into a non-equilibrium state. When entropy flows into the system through either heat transfer or particle transfer, the effective Hilbert space explored by the system enlarges, a mechanism that can enhance many-body chaos. We explicitly demonstrate this idea by constructing a solvable complex Brownian SYK model, in which both the relaxation toward the steady state and the steady-state quantum Lyapunov exponent can be computed analytically. Our results provide a controllable mechanism for tuning quantum scrambling through entropy flow in quantum many-body systems coupled to environments.