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Journal of High Energy Physics

From black hole to qubits: evidence of fast scrambling in BMN theory

Samuel Pramodh, Vatche Sahakian

Published Jul 1, 2015• 9 citations
Publisher

Abstract

BMN Matrix theory admits vacua in the shape of large spherical membranes. Perturbing around such vacua, the setup provides for a controlled computational framework for testing information evolution in Matrix black holes. The theory realizes excitations in the supergravity multiplet as qubits. These qubits are coupled to matrix degrees of freedom that describe deformations of the spherical shape of the membrane. Arranging the ripples on the membrane into a heat bath, we use the qubit system as a probe and compute the associated Feynman-Vernon density matrix at one loop order. This allows us to trace the evolution of entanglement in the system and extract the characteristic scrambling timescale. We find that our numerical analysis is consistent with this time scaling logarithmically with the entropy of the qubit system, in tune with suggestions by Sekino and Susskind.

DOI
10.1007/jhep07(2015)067

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BMN Matrix theory admits vacua in the shape of large spherical membranes. Perturbing around such vacua, the setup provides for a controlled computational framework for testing information evolution in Matrix black holes. The theory realizes excitations in the supergravity multiplet as qubits. These qubits are coupled to matrix degrees of freedom that describe deformations of the spherical shape of the membrane. Arranging the ripples on the membrane into a heat bath, we use the qubit system as a probe and compute the associated Feynman-Vernon density matrix at one loop order. This allows us to trace the evolution of entanglement in the system and extract the characteristic scrambling timescale. We find that our numerical analysis is consistent with this time scaling logarithmically with the entropy of the qubit system, in tune with suggestions by Sekino and Susskind.
BMN Matrix theory admits vacua in the shape of large spherical membranes. Per- turbing around such vacua, the setup provides for a controlled computational frame- work for testing information evolution in Matrix black holes. The theory realizes excitations in the supergravity multiplet as qubits. These qubits are coupled to matrix degrees of freedom that describe deformations of the spherical shape of the membrane. Arranging the ripples on the membrane into a heat bath, we use the qubit system as a probe and compute the associated Feynman-Vernon density matrix at one loop order. This allows us to trace the evolution of entanglement in the system and extract the characteristic scrambling timescale. We find that our numerical analysis is consistent with this time scaling logarithmically with the entropy of the qubit system, in tune with suggestions by Sekino and Susskind.
If black holes are not to be dreaded sinks of information but rather fully described by unitary evolution, they must scramble in-falling data and eventually leak it through Hawking radiation. Sekino and Susskind have conjectured that black holes are fast scramblers; they generate entanglement at a remarkably efficient rate, with the characteristic time scaling logarithmically with the entropy. In this work, we focus on Matrix theory---M-theory in the light-cone frame---and directly probe the conjecture. We develop a concrete test bed for quantum gravity using the fermionic variables of Matrix theory and show that the problem becomes that of chains of qubits with an intricate network of interactions. We demonstrate that the black hole system evolves much like a Brownian quantum circuit, with strong indications that it is indeed a fast scrambler. We also analyze the Berenstein-Maldacena-Nastase model and reach the same tentative conclusion.
To model the interior of a black hole, a study is made of a spin system with long-range random four-spin couplings that exhibits quantum chaos. The black hole limit corresponds to a system where the microstates are approximately degenerate and equally likely, corresponding to the high temperature limit of the spin system. At the leading level of approximation, reconstruction of bulk physics implies that local probes of the black hole should exhibit free propagation and unitary local evolution. We test the conjecture that a particular mean field Hamiltonian provides such a local bulk Hamiltonian by numerically solving the exact Schrodinger equation and comparing the time evolution to the approximate mean field time values. We find excellent agreement between the two time evolutions for timescales smaller than the scrambling time. In earlier work, it was shown bulk evolution along comparable time slices is spoiled by the presence of the curvature singularity, thus the matching found in the present work provides evidence of the success of this approach to interior holography. The numerical solutions also provide a useful testing ground for various measures of quantum chaos and global scrambling. A number of different observables, such as entanglement entropy, out-of-time-order correlators, and trace distance are used to study these effects. This leads to a suitable definition of scrambling time, and evidence is presented showing a logarithmic variation with the system size.
We first propose and study a quantum toy model of black hole dynamics. The model is unitary, displays quantum thermalization, and the Hamiltonian couples every oscillator with every other, a feature intended to emulate the color sector physics of large- N \mathcal{N} N matrix models. Considering out of equilibrium initial states, we analytically compute the time evolution of every correlator of the theory and of the entanglement entropies, allowing a proper discussion of global thermalization/scrambling of information through the entire system. Microscopic non-locality causes factorization of reduced density matrices, and entanglement just depends on the time evolution of occupation densities. In the second part of the article, we show how the gained intuition extends to large- N \mathcal{N} N matrix models, where we provide a gauge invariant entanglement entropy for ‘generalized free fields’, again depending solely on the quasinormal frequencies. The results challenge the fast scrambling conjecture and point to a natural scenario for the emergence of the so-called brick wall or stretched horizon. Finally, peculiarities of these models in regards to the thermodynamic limit and the information paradox are highlighted.
Many proposed quantum mechanical models of black holes include highly nonlocal interactions.The time required for thermalization to occur in such models should reflect the relaxation times associated with classical black holes in general relativity.Moreover, the time required for a particularly strong form of thermalization to occur, sometimes known as scrambling, determines the time scale on which black holes should start to release information.It has been conjectured that black holes scramble in a time logarithmic in their entropy, and that no system in nature can scramble faster.In this article, we address the conjecture from two directions.First, we exhibit two examples of systems that do indeed scramble in logarithmic time: Brownian quantum circuits and the antiferromagnetic Ising model on a sparse random graph.Unfortunately, both fail to be truly ideal fast scramblers for reasons we discuss.Second, we use Lieb-Robinson techniques to prove a logarithmic lower bound on the scrambling time of systems with finite norm terms in their Hamiltonian.The bound holds in spite of any nonlocal structure in the Hamiltonian, which might permit every degree of freedom to interact directly with every other one.