We study signatures of quantum chaos in (1+1)D Quantum Field Theory (QFT) models. Our analysis is based on the method of Hamiltonian truncation, a numerical approach for the construction of low-energy spectra and eigenstates of QFTs that can be considered as perturbations of exactly solvable models. We focus on the double sine-Gordon, also studying the massive sine-Gordon and ${ϕ^4}$ model, all of which are non-integrable and can be studied by this method with sufficiently high precision from small to intermediate perturbation strength. We analyze the statistics of level spacings and of eigenvector components, both of which are expected to follow Random Matrix Theory predictions. While level spacing statistics are close to the Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble as expected, on the contrary, the eigenvector components follow a distribution markedly different from the expected Gaussian. Unlike in the typical quantum chaos scenario, the transition of level spacing statistics to chaotic behaviour takes place already in the perturbative regime. On the other hand, the distribution of eigenvector components does not appear to change or approach Gaussian behaviour, even for relatively large perturbations. Moreover, our results suggest that these features are independent of the choice of model and basis.
We study the time evolution of correlation functions, spin current, and local magnetization in an isolated spin-1/2 chain initially prepared in a sharp domain wall state. The results are compared with the level of spatial delocalization of the eigenstates of the system which is measured using the inverse participation ratio. Both integrable and non-integrable regimes are considered. Non-integrability is introduced to the integrable Hamiltonian with nearest neighbor couplings by adding a single site impurity field or by adding next-nearest-neighbor couplings. A monotonic correspondence between …
We study the matrix elements of local operators in the eigenstates of the integrable XXZ chain and of the quantum-chaotic model obtained by locally perturbing the XXZ chain with a magnetic impurity. We show that, at frequencies that are polynomially small in the system size, the behavior of the variances of the off-diagonal matrix elements can be starkly different depending on the operator. In the integrable model we find that, as the frequency $ω\rightarrow0$, the variances are either nonvanishing (generic behavior) or vanishing (for a special class of operators). In the quantum-chaotic model…
Previous studies show that, in quantum chaotic and integrable systems, the so-called out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) generically behaves differently at long times, while, it may show similar early growth in one-body systems. In this paper, by means of numerical simulations, it is shown that OTOC has similar early growth in two quantum many-body systems, one integrable and one chaotic.
Operator spreading under unitary time evolution has attracted a lot of attention recently, as a way to probe many-body quantum chaos. While quantities such as out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOC) do distinguish interacting from non-interacting systems, it has remained unclear to what extent they can truly diagnose chaotic {\it vs} integrable dynamics in many-body quantum systems. Here, we analyze operator spreading in generic 1D many-body quantum systems using a combination of matrix product operator (MPO) and analytical techniques, focusing on the operator {\em right-weight}. First, we show…
Quantum chaotic and integrable systems are known to exhibit a characteristic $1/f$ and $1/f^{2}$ noise, respectively, in the power spectrum associated to their spectral fluctuations. A recent work [R. Riser, V. A. Osipov, and E. Kanzieper, \textit{Power Spectrum of Long Eigenlevel Sequences in Quantum Chaotic Systems}, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{118}, 204101 (2017)] calls into question the approximations used to derive these results from random matrix theory. In this paper we show that such approximations do remain valid under almost any circumstances. For the integrable limit, we devise a proto…
Weakly chaotic non-linear maps with marginal fixed points have an infinite invariant measure. Time averages of integrable and non-integrable observables remain random even in the long time limit. Temporal averages of integrable observables are described by the Aaronson-Darling-Kac theorem. We find the distribution of time averages of non-integrable observables, for example the time average position of the particle. We show how this distribution is related to the infinite invariant density. We establish four identities between amplitude ratios controlling the statistics of the problem.
We study a generic one-dimensonal quantum model of two flavors (pseudospins) chiral complex fermions by exact diagonalization, which can have local interflavor interaction and superconducting pairings (with all irrelevant terms ignored). Analytically, the model has two solvable (integrable) points in the parameter space: it is a free fermion model when the fermion interaction is zero, and is a free boson Luttinger liquid when there is a global U(1)$^{(\uparrow)}\times$U(1)$^{(\downarrow)}$ symmetry (with nonzero interaction). When the global symmetry of the interacting model is lowered by turn…
Integrable non-linear Hamiltonian systems perturbed by additive noise develop a Lyapunov instability, and are hence chaotic, for any amplitude of the perturbation. This phenomenon is related, but distinct, from Taylor's diffusion in hydrodynamics. We develop expressions for the Lyapunov exponents for the cases of white and colored noise. The situation described here being `multi-resonance' -- by nature well beyond the Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser regime, it offers an analytic glimpse on the regime in which many near-integrable systems, such as some planetary systems, find themselves in practice. We…
We consider a quantum many-body system - the Bose-Hubbard system on three sites - which has a classical limit, and which is neither strongly chaotic nor integrable but rather shows a mixture of the two types of behavior. We compare quantum measures of chaos (eigenvalue statistics and eigenvector structure) in the quantum system, with classical measures of chaos (Lyapunov exponents) in the corresponding classical system. As a function of energy and interaction strength, we demonstrate a strong overall correspondence between the two cases. In contrast to both strongly chaotic and integrable syst…
Out-of-time-ordered correlation functions (OTOC's) are presently being extensively debated as quantifiers of dynamical chaos in interacting quantum many-body systems. We argue that in quantum spin and fermionic systems, where all local operators are bounded, an OTOC of local observables is bounded as well and thus its exponential growth is merely transient. As a better measure of quantum chaos in such systems, we propose, and study, the density of the OTOC of extensive sums of local observables, which can exhibit indefinite growth in the thermodynamic limit. We demonstrate this for the kicked …
We study sudden quantum quenches in which the initial states are selected to be either eigenstates of an integrable Hamiltonian that is nonmappable to a noninteracting one or a nonintegrable Hamiltonian, while the Hamiltonian after the quench is always integrable and mappable to a noninteracting one. By studying weighted energy densities and entropies, we show that quenches starting from nonintegrable (chaotic) eigenstates lead to an "ergodic" sampling of the eigenstates of the final Hamiltonian, while those starting from the integrable eigenstates do not (or at least it is not apparent for th…
How to distinguish chaos from integrability using OTOC
Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院量子信息物质研究所）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kentucky（肯塔基大学物理与天文学系）；Department of Theoretical Physics, CERN（欧洲核子研究中心理论物理部）；Laboratory for Theoretical Fundamental Physics, EPFL（洛桑联邦理工学院基础物理理论实验室）
The quantum dynamics of initial coherent states is studied in the Dicke model and correlated with the dynamics, regular or chaotic, of their classical limit. Analytical expressions for the survival probability, i.e. the probability of finding the system in its initial state at time $t$, are provided in the regular regions of the model. The results for regular regimes are compared with those of the chaotic ones. It is found that initial coherent states in regular regions have a much longer equilibration time than those located in chaotic regions. The properties of the distributions for the init…
We study the onset of chaos and statistical relaxation in two isolated dynamical quantum systems of interacting spins-1/2, one of which is integrable and the other chaotic. Our approach to identifying the emergence of chaos is based on the level of delocalization of the eigenstates with respect to the energy shell, the latter being determined by the interaction strength between particles or quasi-particles. We also discuss how the onset of chaos may be anticipated by a careful analysis of the Hamiltonian matrices, even before diagonalization. We find that despite differences between the two mo…
We propose a method to study the transition to chaos in isolated quantum systems of interacting particles. It is based on the concept of delocalization of eigenstates in the energy shell, controlled by the Gaussian form of the strength function. We show that although the fluctuations of energy levels in integrable and non-integrable systems are principally different, global properties of the eigenstates may be quite similar, provided the interaction between particles exceeds some critical value. In this case the quench dynamics can be described analytically, demonstrating the universal statist…
An innovative test for detecting quantum chaos based on the analysis of the spectral fluctuations regarded as a time series has been recently proposed. According to this test, the fluctuations of a fully chaotic system should exhibit 1/f noise, whereas for an integrable system this noise should obey the 1/f^2 power law. In this letter, we show that there is a family of well-known integrable systems, namely spin chains of Haldane-Shastry type, whose spectral fluctuations decay instead as 1/f^4. We present a simple theoretical justification of this fact, and propose an alternative characterizati…
The low energy dynamics of mesoscopic systems strongly depends on the presence of internal equilibration. For this reason, a better interpretation of ultracold atom experiments requires a more accurate understanding of how quantum chaos manifests itself in these systems. In this paper, we consider a simple but experimentally relevant one-dimensional system of a few ultracold fermions moving in a double-well potential. We analyze its many-body spectral properties, which are commonly used to trace quantum chaos. We observe some signatures of quantum chaos already in the system with three particl…
Integrable quantum systems of finite size are generically robust against weak enough integrability-breaking perturbations, but become quantum chaotic and thermalizing if the integrability-breaking is strong enough. We argue that the onset of quantum chaos can be described as a Fock-space delocalization process, with the eigenstates of the integrable system being taken as the "Fock states". The integrability-breaking perturbation introduces hopping in this Fock space, and chaos sets in when this hopping delocalizes the many-body eigenstates in this space. Depending on the range of the dominant …
This paper summarises a numerical investigation of the statistical properties of orbits evolved in `frozen,' time-independent N-body realisations of smooth, time-independent density distributions, allowing for 10^(2.5)<N<10^(5.5). Two principal conclusions were reached: (1) In the limit of a nearly `unsoftened' two-body kernel, the value of the largest Lyapunov exponent does NOT appear to decrease systematically with increasing N. (2) Nevertheless, there is a clear quantifiable sense in which, on the average, as N increases chaotic orbits in the frozen-N systems come to more closely approximat…
The entanglement evolution after a quantum quench became one of the tools to distinguish integrable versus chaotic (non-integrable) quantum many-body dynamics. Following this line of thoughts, here we propose that the revivals in the entanglement entropy provide a finite-size diagnostic benchmark for the purpose. Indeed, integrable models display periodic revivals manifested in a dip in the block entanglement entropy in a finite system. On the other hand, in chaotic systems, initial correlations get dispersed in the global degrees of freedom (information scrambling) and such a dip is suppresse…
In this paper, we study random features manifested in components of energy eigenfunctions of quantum chaotic systems, given in the basis of unperturbed, integrable systems. Based on semiclassical analysis, particularly on Berry's conjecture, it is shown that the components in classically allowed regions can be regarded as Gaussian random numbers in certain sense, when appropriately rescaled with respect to the average shape of the eigenfunctions. This suggests that, when a perturbed system changes from integrable to chaotic, deviation of the distribution of rescaled components in classically a…
Systems where time evolution follows a multiplicative process are ubiquitous in physics. We study a toy model for such systems where each time step is given by multiplication with an independent random $N\times N$ matrix with complex Gaussian elements, the complex Ginibre ensemble. This model allows to explicitly compute the Lyapunov exponents and local correlations amongst them, when the number of factors $M$ becomes large. While the smallest eigenvalues always remain deterministic, which is also the case for many chaotic quantum systems, we identify a critical double scaling limit $N\sim M$ …
We extend the results of two of our papers [Phys. Rev. A 94, 041603R (2016) and Phys. Rev. B 97, 060303R (2018)] that touch upon the intimately connected topics of quantum chaos and thermalization. In the first, we argued that when the initial state of isolated lattice many-body quantum systems is chaotic, the power-law decay of the survival probability is caused by the bounds in the spectrum, and thus anticipates thermalization. In the current work, we provide stronger numerical support for the onset of these algebraic behaviors. In the second paper, we demonstrated that the correlation hole,…
