We investigate the appearance of quantum chaos in a single many-body wave function by analyzing the statistical properties of the eigenvalues of its reduced density matrix ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\rho}}}_{A}$ of a spatial subsystem
A. We find that (i): the spectrum of the density matrix is described by so-called Wishart random matrix theory, which (ii): exhibits besides level repulsion, spectral rigidity, and universal spectral correlations between eigenvalues separated by distances ranging from one up to many mean level spacings, which we investigate. We use these universal spectral characteristics of the reduced density matrix as a definition of chaos in the wave function. A simple and precise characterization of such universal correlations in a spectrum is a segment of strictly linear growth at sufficiently long times, recently called the ``ramp,'' of the spectral form factor which is the Fourier transform of the correlation function between a pair of eigenvalues. It turns out that Wishart and standard random matrix theory have the same universal ``ramp.'' Specifically, here numerical results for the spectral form factor of the density matrix of generic nonintegrable many-body systems, such as one-dimensional quantum Ising and Floquet spin models, are found to exhibit a universal ``ramp'' identical to that appearing for a ``random pure state'' (``Page state,'' or ``Haar state''). The density matrix of the latter is precisely the Wishart random matrix, the reduced density matrix of a completely random wave function. In addition, we study the development of chaos in the wave function by letting an initial direct product state evolve under the unitary time evolution. We find that the universal spectral correlations as manifested by the ``ramp'' set in as soon as the entanglement entropy begins to grow, and first develop for the eigenvalues at the top of the spectrum of the density matrix ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\rho}}}_{A}$, subsequently spreading over the entire spectrum at later times. Finally, we study a prethermalized regime described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble, which develops in a rapidly driven Floquet model at intermediate times. We find that the prethermalized regime exhibits no chaos, as evidenced by the absence of a ``ramp'' in the spectral form factor of the density matrix, while the universal spectral correlations start to develop when the prethermalized regime finally relaxes at late times to the fully thermalized (infinite temperature) chaotic regime.
We analyze in detail a sharp transition between the low-energy, low-dimensional eigenstates and the high-energy chaotic bulk of the spectrum for a simple supersymmetric quantum-mechanical model with Hamiltonian
H^S=(p^12+p^22+x^12x^22)⊗I+x^1⊗σ1+x^2⊗σ3, which mimics the structure of the Banks-Fischler-Susskind-Stanford (BFSS) matrix model, the spatially compactified
N=1 super-Yang-Mills theory. We conjecture that this transition might be similar to the transition between the
D0-brane and
M-theory regimes in the BFSS model, and find that it does not lead to irregularities in the thermodynamic equation of state. We demonstrate that real-time spectral form-factor for our supersymmetric model exhibits the ``ramp'' behavior typical for quantum chaos. We also analyze the entanglement entropy and the spectrum of the reduced density matrix of the eigenstates of
H^S, considering one of the bosonic degrees of freedom as a subsystem. The entanglement entropy of low-energy eigenstates appears to be practically energy-independent. Exactly at the onset of random-matrix-type level spacing fluctuations, this behavior rapidly changes into a steady growth of entanglement with energy. We demonstrate that the spectrum of the reduced density matrix also exhibits universal level-spacing fluctuations towards its higher end, even for the ground state of the supersymmetric model. Thus even the regularly spaced, non-chaotic eigenstates contain some information about semi-classical chaotic dynamics at high energies.
The dynamical signatures of quantum chaos in an isolated system are captured by the spectral form factor, which exhibits as a function of time a dip, a ramp, and a plateau, with the ramp being governed by the correlations in the level spacing distribution. While decoherence generally suppresses these dynamical signatures, the nonlinear non-Hermitian evolution with balanced gain and loss (BGL) in an energy-dephasing scenario can enhance manifestations of quantum chaos. In the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and random matrix Hamiltonians, BGL increases the span of the ramp, lowering the dip as well as the value of the plateau, providing an experimentally realizable physical mechanism for spectral filtering. The chaos enhancement due to BGL is optimal over a family of filter functions that can be engineered with fluctuating Hamiltonians.