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Europhysics Letters (EPL)

Half-wormholes in a complex SYK model

Yingyu Yang

Published Aug 20, 2025• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract We compute the half-wormhole contribution in a complex SYK model with one time point by exact computations and saddle point analysis. The chemical potential significantly influences the computation and the relative magnitude of the half-wormhole. When the chemical potential is large compared to the random coupling, the disk dominates so that there is no wormhole and half-wormhole. When the chemical potential is relatively small we find out the wormhole and the half-wormhole contributions.

DOI
10.1209/0295-5075/adfd7d

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Abstract We compute the half-wormhole contribution in a complex SYK model with one time point by exact computations and saddle point analysis. The chemical potential significantly influences the computation and the relative magnitude of the half-wormhole. When the chemical potential is large compared to the random coupling, the disk dominates so that there is no wormhole and half-wormhole. When the chemical potential is relatively small we find out the wormhole and the half-wormhole contributions.
In this note we study the SYK model with one time point, recently considered by Saad, Shenker, Stanford, and Yao. Working in a collective field description, they derived a remarkable identity: the square of the partition function with fixed couplings is well approximated by a ``wormhole'' saddle plus a ``pair of linked half-wormholes'' saddle. It explains factorization of decoupled systems. Here, we derive an explicit formula for the half-wormhole contribution. It is expressed through a hyperpfaffian of the tensor of SYK couplings. We then develop a perturbative expansion around the half-wormhole saddle. This expansion truncates at a finite order and gives the exact answer. The last term in the perturbative expansion turns out to coincide with the wormhole contribution. In this sense the wormhole saddle in this model does not need to be added separately, but instead can be viewed as a large fluctuation around the linked half-wormholes.
The Sachdev--Ye--Kitaev (SYK) model has a wormholelike solution after averaging over the fermionic couplings in the nearly AdS2{\mathrm{AdS}}_{2}AdS2​ space. Even when the couplings are fixed the contribution of these wormholes continues to exist and new saddle points appear which are interpreted as ``half-wormholes.'' In this paper, we will study the fate of these wormholes in a model without quenched disorder, namely, a tensor model with $O(N{)}^{q\ensuremath{-}1}$ gauge symmetry whose correlation function and thermodynamics in the large NNN limit are the same as that of the SYK model. We will restate the factorization problem linked with the wormhole threaded Wilson operator, in terms of global charges or nontrivial cobordism classes associated with disconnected wormholes. Therefore for the partition function to factorize especially at short distances, there must exist certain topological defects which break the global symmetry associated with wormholes and make the theory devoid of global symmetries. We will interpret these wormholes with added topological defects as our ``half-wormholes.'' We will also comment on the late time behavior of the spectral form factor, particularly its leading and subleading order contributions coming from higher genus wormholes in the gravitational sector. Finally we will show how the other nontrivial saddles from half-wormhole dominate and give rise to unusual thermodynamics in the bulk sector due to nonperturbative effects.
Abstract In this paper, we introduce a “partially disorder-averaged” SYK model. This model has a real parameter that smoothly interpolates between the ordinary totally disorder-averaged SYK model and the totally fixed-coupling model. For the large N effective description, in addition to the usual bi-local collective fields, we also introduce a new additional set of local collective fields. These local fields can be understood as “half” of the bi-local collective fields, and in the totally fixed-coupling limit, they represent the “half-wormholes” which were found in recent studies. We find that the large N saddles of these local fields vanish in the total-disorder-averaged limit, while they develop nontrivial profiles as we gradually fix the coupling constants. We argue that the bulk picture of these local collective fields represents a correlation between a spacetime brane and the asymptotic AdS boundary. This illuminates how the half-wormhole saddles emerge in the SYK model with fixed couplings.
A bstract After averaging over fermion couplings, SYK has a collective field description that sometimes has “wormhole” solutions. We study the fate of these wormholes when the couplings are fixed. Working mainly in a simple model, we find that the wormhole saddles persist, but that new saddles also appear elsewhere in the integration space — “half-wormholes.” The wormhole contributions depend only weakly on the specific choice of couplings, while the half-wormhole contributions are strongly sensitive. The half-wormholes are crucial for factorization of decoupled systems with fixed couplings, but they vanish after averaging, leaving the non-factorizing wormhole behind.
Abstract In this work, we study a generalization of the coupled Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model with U(1) charge conservations. The model contains two copies of the complex SYK model at different chemical potentials, coupled by a direct hopping term. In the zero-temperature and small coupling limit with small averaged chemical potential, the ground state is an eternal wormhole connecting two sides, with a specific chargeQ= 0, which is equivalent to a thermofield double state. We derive the conformal Green’s functions and determine corresponding IR parameters. At higher chemical potential, the system transit into the black hole phase. We further derive the Schwarzian effective action and study its quench dynamics. Finally, we compare numerical results with the analytical predictions.
Abstract We study the SYK model with complex fermions, in the presence of an all-to-all q-body interaction, with a non-vanishing chemical potential. We find that, in the large q limit, this model can be solved exactly and the corresponding Lyapunov exponent can be obtained semi-analytically. The resulting Lyapunov exponent is a sensitive function of the chemical potential μ. Even when the coupling J, which corresponds to the disorder averaged values of the all to all fermion interaction, is large, values of μ which are exponentially small compared to J lead to suppression of the Lyapunov exponent.