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arXiv:2610.19130

Kinetic Equations and Turbulence in Large $N$ Vector and SYK-like Models

V. Rosenhaus, Daniel Schubring

Published Oct 13, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We apply large $N$ expansion techniques to derive kinetic equations for strongly coupled, far-from-equilibrium field theories with $O(N)$ symmetry. For large $N$ vector models, the quasi-classical approximation holds. Incorporating arbitrary momentum-dependent interactions, we show the dynamics obey the standard kinetic equation, with the scattering amplitude given by the retarded propagator of the auxiliary Hubbard-Stratonovich field. This has broad applications to systems like spin wave and Langmuir ion-acoustic turbulence. For large $N$ random coupling (SYK-like) models in $d$ dimensions, leading-order melon diagrams induce order-one propagator renormalization and finite spectral width. The corresponding kinetic equation, unlike those for standard weakly interacting systems, does not have a local-in-time collision integral. We find evidence for a stationary, scale-invariant infrared solution, revealing a potentially novel strong turbulence scaling exponent.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2610.19130

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Kinetic Equations and Turbulence in Large NNN Vector and SYK-like Models
We apply large NNN expansion techniques to derive kinetic equations for strongly coupled, far-from-equilibrium field theories with O(N)O(N)O(N) symmetry. For large NNN vector models, the quasi-classical approximation holds. Incorporating arbitrary momentum-dependent interactions, we show the dynamics obey the standard kinetic equation, with the scattering amplitude given by the retarded propagator of the auxiliary Hubbard-Stratonovich field. This has broad applications to systems like spin wave and Langmuir ion-acoustic turbulence. For large NNN random coupling (SYK-like) models in ddd dimensions, leading-order melon diagrams induce order-one propagator renormalization and finite spectral width. The corresponding kinetic equation, unlike those for standard weakly interacting systems, does not have a local-in-time collision integral. We find evidence for a stationary, scale-invariant infrared solution, revealing a potentially novel strong turbulence scaling exponent.
We extend the theory of nonthermal fixed points to the case of anomalously slow universal scaling dynamics according to the sine-Gordon model. This entails the derivation of a kinetic equation for the momentum occupancy of the scalar field from a nonperturbative two-particle irreducible effective action, which resums a series of closed loop chains akin to a large-NNN expansion at next-to-leading order. The resulting kinetic equation is analyzed for possible scaling solutions in space and time that are characterized by a set of universal scaling exponents and encode self-similar transport to low momenta. Assuming the momentum occupancy distribution to exhibit a scaling form we can determine the exponents by identifying the dominating contributions to the scattering integral and power counting. If the field exhibits strong variations across many wells of the cosine potential, the scattering integral is dominated by the scattering of many quasiparticles such that the momentum of each single participating mode is only weakly constrained. Remarkably, in this case, in contrast to wave turbulent cascades, which correspond to local transport in momentum space, our results suggest that kinetic scattering here is dominated by rather nonlocal processes corresponding to a spatial containment in position space. The corresponding universal correlation functions in momentum and position space corroborate this conclusion. Numerical simulations performed in accompanying work yield scaling properties close to the ones predicted here.
Universal dynamics of a dilute Bose gas is studied within the kinetic regime where the time evolution of the mode occupation number is governed by a wave-Boltzmann equation. The universality manifests itself in the form of the dynamical evolution which can be a cascade in the context of Kolmogorov-Zakharov wave turbulence or a self-similar shift in time and space. Which is the case depends on the relevant global conservation laws and on the particular range of scales in which the respective dynamics takes place. A nonperturbative kinetic equation is derived by applying the Schwinger-Keldysh closed-time functional integral and the 2-particle-irreducible formalism to an action of complex scalar Bose fields with quartic interaction. The resulting dynamic equation for two-point correlations are reduced to a wave-Boltzmann-type kinetic equation with an effective TTT-matrix which depends explicitly on the mode occupation numbers. This nonperturbative dependence on the solution occurs in the infrared regime where wave numbers are large and collective scattering of many particles prevails. Thus, the scaling analysis of wave turbulence theory can be applied. We explicitly calculate the effective TTT-matrix analytically taking into account an infrared cutoff for dealing with the infrared divergences. Our results show that the scaling behaviour of the TTT-matrix departs from the one predicted by naive dimensional counting due to the presence of the infrared cutoff. The Kolmogorov-Zakharov and the self-similar exponents are evaluated by power counting using our TTT-matrix and the results are confirmed by numerical integration of the wave-Boltzmann scattering integral. The scaling exponents governing the time evolution are determined by means of the global conservation laws and the kinetic equation. Depending on the scaling properties of the quasiparticle spectrum, the momentum cutoff scale in the infrared evolves critically slowed in time. The respective scaling exponent is universal in the nonperturbative regime regardless of whether the process is an inverse cascade or a self-similar shift towards the infrared. Thus, our results provide a general framework for classifying nonthermal fixed points in dilute ultracold Bose gases. They pave the way to a straightforward generalisation and application to trapped systems in different dimensionalities and to systems with more than one internal degree of freedom. Our results furthermore provide a possible interpretation of recent experimental results on wave turbulence in an ultracold Bose gas. %We studied the universal dynamics of diluted Bose gas within the kinetic regime where time evolution of occupation number is governed by the Boltzmann's scattering integral. %There are three possible scenarios, depending on the scaling behaviour of occupation number. They are the particle and energy cascade which are the steady state of turbulence transport and self-similar evolution where local occupation evolves in time. %We evaluated the scaling exponents in both momentum and time scales in each case under the constraints of global number and energy conservation. Furthermore, we can go beyond the perturbative regime by employing the closed-time-path contour and the 2-particle-irreducible formalism to the Gross-Pitaevskii action. The kinetic equation is modified by an effective T-matrix as a result of the resummation scheme. However, the structure of kinetic equation remains the same as in the perturbative case. Thus, all exponents in the nonperturbative regime depart from those in the perturbative regime because of the scaling of the effective T-matrix.
Turbulent scaling phenomena are studied in an ultracold Bose gas away from thermal equilibrium. Fixed points of the dynamical evolution are characterized in terms of universal scaling exponents of correlation functions. The scaling behavior is determined analytically in the framework of quantum field theory, using a nonperturbative approximation of the two-particle irreducible effective action. While perturbative Kolmogorov scaling is recovered at higher energies, scaling solutions with anomalously large exponents arise in the infrared regime of the turbulence spectrum. The extraordinary enhancement in the momentum dependence of long-range correlations could be experimentally accessible in dilute ultracold atomic gases. Such experiments have the potential to provide insight into dynamical phenomena directly relevant also in other present-day focus areas like heavy-ion collisions and early-universe cosmology.
We consider an effective kinetic description for quantum many-body systems, which is not based on a weak-coupling or diluteness expansion. Instead, it employs an expansion in the number of field components NNN of the underlying scalar quantum field theory. Extending previous studies, we demonstrate that the large-NNN kinetic theory at next-to-leading order is able to describe important aspects of highly occupied systems, which are beyond standard perturbative kinetic approaches. We analyze the underlying quasiparticle dynamics by computing the effective scattering matrix elements analytically and solve numerically the large-NNN kinetic equation for a highly occupied system far from equilibrium. This allows us to compute the universal scaling form of the distribution function at an infrared nonthermal fixed point within a kinetic description, and we compare to existing lattice field theory simulation results.
We point out that a classical analog of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, a solvable model of quantum many-body chaos, was studied long ago in the turbulence literature. Motivated by the Navier-Stokes equation in the turbulent regime and the nonlinear Schrödinger equation describing plasma turbulence, in which there is mixing between many different modes, the random coupling model has a Gaussian-random coupling between any four of a large number N of modes. The model was solved in the 1960s, before the introduction of large-N path-integral techniques, using a method referred to as the direct interaction approximation. We use the path integral to derive the effective action for the model. The large-N saddle gives an integral equation for the two-point function, which is very similar to the corresponding equation in the SYK model. The connection between the SYK model and the random coupling model may, on the one hand, provide new physical contexts in which to realize the SYK model and, on the other hand, suggest new models of turbulence and techniques for studying them.
We present kinetic equations that describe the evolution of O(N)-symmetric real scalar quantum fields out of thermal equilibrium in a systematic nonperturbative approximation scheme. This description starts from the 1/N-expansion of the 2PI effective action to next-to-leading order, which includes scattering and memory effects. From this starting point one is lead to evolution equations for the propagator, which are nonlocal in time. Numerical solutions showed that the propagator depends only very slightly on the center coordinates already after moderate times, and that correlations between earlier and later times are suppressed exponentially, which causes an effective memory loss. Exploiting these two observations, we combine a first order gradient expansion with a Wigner transformation to derive our kinetic equations, which are local in time, from the nonlocal evolution equations. In contrast to standard descriptions based on loop expansions, our kinetic equations remain valid even for nonperturbatively large fluctuations. Additionally, employing a quasi-particle approximation, we eventually arrive at a generalized Boltzmann equation.