We introduce a spinful variant of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model with an effective time reversal symmetry, which can be solved exactly in the limit of a large number $N$ of degrees of freedom. At low temperature, its phase diagram includes a compressible non-Fermi liquid and a strongly-correlated spin singlet superconductor that shows a tunable enhancement of the gap ratio predicted by BCS theory. These two phases are separated by a first-order transition, in the vicinity of which a gapless superconducting phase, characterized by a non-zero magnetization, is stabilized upon applying a Zeeman field. We study equilibrium transport properties of such superconductors using a lattice construction, and propose a physical platform based on topological insulator flakes where they may arise from repulsive electronic interactions.
In this work, we investigate whether the Kitaev honeycomb model can serve as a starting point to realize the intriguing physics of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. The starting point is to strain the system, which leads to flat bands reminiscent of Landau levels, thereby quenching the kinetic energy. The presence of weak residual perturbations, such as Heisenberg interactions and the $γ$-term, creates effective interactions between the Majorana modes when projected into the flux-free sector. We assume the resulting interactions to be effectively random. This leads to a bipartite Sachdev-Ye-K…
We show that a single-fermion quantum dot acquires odd-frequency Gor'kov anomalous averages in proximity to strongly correlated Majorana zero modes, described by the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. Despite the presence of finite anomalous pairing, the superconducting gap vanishes for the intermediate coupling strength between the quantum dot and Majoranas. The increase of the coupling leads to smooth suppression of the original quasiparticles. This effect might be used as a characterization tool for recently proposed tabletop realizations of the SYK model.
We consider the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model where interaction involves $q$ fermions at a time. We find the next order correction to the thermal two-point function in the large $q$ expansion. Using this result we find the next order correction to the SYK free energy.
We study the out-of-time-order correlation function (OTOC) in a lattice extension of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model with quadratic perturbations. The results obtained are valid for arbitrary time scales, both shorter and longer than the Ehrenfest time. We demonstrate that the region of well-developed chaos is separated from the weakly chaotic region by the "front region", which moves ballistically across the lattice. Front velocity is calculated for various system's parameters, for the first time for SYK-like models.
Several condensed-matter platforms have been proposed recently to realize the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model in their low-energy limit. In these proposed realizations, the characteristic SYK behavior is expected to occur under certain assumptions about the underlying physical system that (i) render all bilinear terms small compared to four-fermion interactions and (ii) ensure that the coupling constants are approximately all-to-all and independent random variables. In this work we explore, both analytically and numerically, the family of models that arises when we relax these assumptions in way…
We argue that in certain class of coupled Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev(SYK) models the low energy physics at large N is governed by a non-local action rather than the Schwartzian action. We present a partial analytic and extensive numerical evidence for this. We find that these models are maximally chaotic and have the same residual entropy as Majorana SYK. However, thermodynamic quantities, such as heat capacity and diffusion constant are different.
We compute the energy diffusion constant $D$, Lyapunov time $τ_{\text{L}}$ and butterfly velocity $v_{\text{B}}$ in an inhomogeneous chain of coupled Majorana Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models in the large $N$ and strong coupling limit. We find $D\le v_{\text{B}}^2 τ_{\text{L}}$ from a combination of analytical and numerical approaches. Our example necessitates the sharpening of postulated transport bounds based on quantum chaos.
We consider an exact solvable interacting spinful Kitaev chain which is a generalization of the Mattis-Nam model. A nearest-neighbor dimerized interaction favoring the production of disjoint molecules drives the quantum phase into an insulating one. The phases are characterized statically and dynamically in terms of magnetization and spin-singlet correlations by using the exact solution. The model is shown to be exactly solvable also in the presence of boundary interactions which are originated from a spin-singlet superconducting pairing and a magnetic field. We exploit the exact solution to i…
We study the entanglement entropy of eigenstates (including the ground state) of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. We argue for a volume law, whose coefficient can be calculated analytically from the density of states. The coefficient depends on not only the energy density of the eigenstate but also the subsystem size. Very recent numerical results of Liu, Chen, and Balents confirm our analytical results.
Abstract We study a two-band dispersive Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model in 1 + 1 dimension. We suggest a model that describes a semimetal with quadratic dispersion at half-filling. We compute the Green's function at the saddle point using a combination of analytical and numerical methods. Employing a scaling symmetry of the Schwinger-Dyson equations that becomes transparent in the strongly dispersive limit, we show that the exact solution of the problem yields a distinct type of non-Fermi liquid with sublinear $ρ\propto T^{2/5}$ temperature dependence of the resistivity. A scaling analysis indic…
The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model describes a collection of randomly interacting Majorana fermions that exhibits profound connections to quantum chaos and black holes. We propose a solid-state implementation based on a quantum dot coupled to an array of topological superconducting wires hosting Majorana zero modes. Interactions and disorder intrinsic to the dot mediate the desired random Majorana couplings, while an approximate symmetry suppresses additional unwanted terms. We use random matrix theory and numerics to show that our setup emulates the SYK model (up to corrections that we quantif…
We continue the investigation of coupled Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev(SYK) models without Schwarzian action dominance. Like the original SYK, at large N and low energies these models have an approximate reparametrization symmetry. However, the dominant action for reparametrizations is non-local due to the presence of irrelevant local operator with small conformal dimension. We semi-analytically study different thermodynamic properties and the 4-point function and demonstrate that they significantly differ from the Schwarzian prediction. However, the residual entropy and maximal chaos exponent are the sam…
In a recent comment to the paper Chaotic Integrable transition in the SYK model, it was claimed that, in a certain region of parameters, the Lyapunov exponent of the N Majoranas Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model with a quadratic perturbation, is always positive. This implies that the model is quantum chaotic. In this reply, we show that the employed perturbative formalism breaks down precisely in the range of parameters investigated in the comment due to a lack of separation of time scales. Moreover, based on recent analytical results, we show that for any large and fixed N, the model has indeed a chaot…
We study a bipartite version of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. We show that the model remains solvable in the limit of large-$N$ in the same sense as the original model if the ratio of both flavors is kept finite. The scaling dimensions of the two species can be tuned continuously as a function of the ratio. We also investigate the finite-size spectral properties of the model. We show how the level statistics differs from the original SYK model and infer an additional exchange symmetry in the bipartite model.
The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model is a $(0+1)$-dimensional model describing Majorana fermions or complex fermions with random interactions. This model has various interesting properties such as approximate local criticality (power law correlation in time), zero temperature entropy, and quantum chaos. In this article, we propose a higher dimensional generalization of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, which is a lattice model with $N$ Majorana fermions at each site and random interactions between them. Our model can be defined on arbitrary lattices in arbitrary spatial dimensions. In the large $N$ limit, t…
Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) is a concrete solvable model with non-Fermi liquid behavior and maximal chaos. In this work, we study the entanglement Rényi entropy for the subsystems of the SYK model in the Kourkoulou-Maldacena states. We use the path-integral approach and take the saddle point approximation in the large-$N$ limit. We find a first-order transition exist when tuning the subsystem size for the $q=4$ case, while it is absent for the $q=2$ case. We further study the entanglement dynamics for such states under the real-time evolution for noninteracting, weakly interacting and strongly int…
We construct a series of one-dimensional non-unitary dynamics consisting of both unitary and imaginary evolutions based on the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. Starting from a short-range entangled state, we analyze the entanglement dynamics using the path integral formalism in the large $N$ limit. Among all the results that we obtain, two of them are particularly interesting: (1) By varying the strength of the imaginary evolution, the interacting model exhibits a first order phase transition from the highly entangled volume law phase to an area law phase; (2) The one-dimensional free fermion model di…
We describe the non-equilibrium dynamics of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models of fermions with all-to-all interactions. These provide tractable models of the dynamics of quantum systems without quasiparticle excitations. The Kadanoff-Baym equations show that the final state is thermal, and their numerical analysis appears consistent with a thermalization rate proportional to the absolute temperature of the final state. We also obtain an exact analytic solution of the non-equilibrium dynamics in the large $q$ limit of a model with $q$ fermion interactions: in this limit, the thermalization of the fe…
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 charge $Q=0$, 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 …
We give an exposition of the SYK model with several new results. A non-local correction to the Schwarzian effective action is found. The same action is obtained by integrating out the bulk degrees of freedom in a certain variant of dilaton gravity. We also discuss general properties of out-of-time-order correlators.
The SYK model consists of $N\gg 1$ fermions in $0+1$ dimensions with a random, all-to-all quartic interaction. Recently, Kitaev has found that the SYK model is maximally chaotic and has proposed it as a model of holography. We solve the Schwinger-Dyson equation and compute the spectrum of two-particle states in SYK, finding both a continuous and discrete tower. The four-point function is expressed as a sum over the spectrum. The sum over the discrete tower is evaluated.
We study a series of perturbations on the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. We show that the chaotic non-Fermi liquid phase described by the ordinary $q = 4$ SYK model has marginally relevant/irrelevant (depending on the sign of the coupling constants) four-fermion perturbations allowed by symmetry. Changing the sign of one of these four-fermion perturbations leads to a continuous chaotic-nonchaotic quantum phase transition of the system accompanied by a spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking. Starting with the SYK$_q$ model with a $q-$fermion interaction, similar perturbations can lead to a…
Supersymmetry is a powerful concept in quantum many-body physics. It helps to illuminate ground state properties of complex quantum systems and gives relations between correlation functions. In this work, we show that the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, in its simplest form of Majorana fermions with random four-body interactions, is supersymmetric. In contrast to existing explicitly supersymmetric extensions of the model, the supersymmetry we find requires no relations between couplings. The type of supersymmetry and the structure of the supercharges are entirely set by the number of interacting Majo…
We show that the proper inclusion of soft reparameterization modes in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model of $N$ randomly interacting Majorana fermions reduces its long-time behavior to that of Liouville quantum mechanics. As a result, all zero temperature correlation functions decay with the universal exponent $\propto τ^{-3/2}$ for times larger than the inverse single particle level spacing $τ\gg N\ln N$. In the particular case of the single particle Green function this behavior is manifestation of the zero-bias anomaly, or scaling in energy as $ε^{1/2}$. We also present exact diagonalization study …
We propose a simple solvable variant of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model which displays a quantum phase transition from a fast-scrambling non-Fermi liquid to disordered Fermi liquid. Like the canonical SYK model, our variant involves a single species of Majorana fermions connected by all-to-all random four-fermion interactions. The phase transition is driven by a random two-fermion term added to the Hamiltonian whose structure is inspired by proposed solid-state realizations of the SYK model. Analytic expressions for the saddle point solutions at large number $N$ of fermions are obtained and …
We show that a non-Hermitian two coupled Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model can provide thermodynamic structure equivalent to Hermitian two coupled SYK model. The energy spectrum, the entanglement degree of the ground states and the low energy effective action of this model are not influenced by the non-Hermiticity. The novel biorthogonal ground states demonstrates that two SYK sites, one of which can be in the ground state and the other in the Schwarzian excited state by tuning the non-Hermiticity. We find evidence that the free energy is independent of the non-Hermiticity.
The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model spectral form factor exhibits absence of information loss in the form of a ramp and a plateau, that are typical of random matrix theory. In a large $N$ collective fields description, the ramp was reproduced by Saad, Shenker and Stanford \cite{Saad:2018bqo}, by replica symmetry breaking saddles for a connected component of the analytically continued to real times thermal partition function two point function. We derive a two sides Schwarzians effective action for fluctuations around the ramp critical saddles, by adapting to the two replica system a method by Kitaev a…
We present a microscopic theory for quantum thermoelectric and heat transport in the Schwarzian regime of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. As a charged fermion realization of the SYK model in nanostructures we assume a setup based on a quantum dot connected to the charge reservoirs through weak tunnel barriers. We analyze particle-hole symmetry breaking effects crucial for both Seebeck and Peltier coefficients. We show that the quantum charge and heat transport at low temperatures are defined by the interplay between elastic and inelastic processes such that the inelastic processes provide a…
`Strange metals' with resistivity depending linearly on temperature $T$ down to low-$T$ have been a long-standing puzzle in condensed matter physics. Here, we consider a model of itinerant spin-$1/2$ fermions interacting via on-site Hubbard interaction and random infinite-ranged spin-spin interaction. We show that the quantum critical point associated with the melting of the spin-glass phase by charge fluctuations displays non-Fermi liquid behaviour, with local spin dynamics identical to that of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev family of models. This extends the quantum spin liquid dynamics previously es…
In this paper, we study the evaporation dynamics of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, with an initial temperature $T_χ$, by coupling it to a thermal bath with lower temperature $T_ψ<T_χ$ modeled by a larger SYK model. The coupling between the small system and the bath is turned on at time $t=0$. Then the system begins to envolve and finally becomes thermalized. Using the Keldysh approach, we analyze the relaxation process of the system for different temperatures and couplings. For marginal or irrelevant coupling, after a short-time energy absorption, we find a smooth thermalization of the sma…
We study the spread of Rényi entropy between two halves of a Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) chain of Majorana fermions, prepared in a thermofield double (TFD) state. The SYK chain model is a model of chaotic many-body systems, which describes a one-dimensional lattice of Majorana fermions, with spatially local random quartic interaction. We find that for integer Rényi index $n>1$, the Rényi entanglement entropy saturates at a parametrically smaller value than expected. This implies that the TFD state of the SYK chain does not rapidly thermalize, despite being maximally chaotic: instead, it rapidly ap…
Many key features of the higher-dimensional Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model at {\it finite} $N$ remain unknown. Here we study the SYK chain consisting of $N$ ($N$$\ge$$2$) fermions per site with random interactions and hoppings between neighboring sites. In the limit of vanishing SYK interactions, from both supersymmetric field theory analysis and numerical calculations we find that the random hopping model exhibits Anderson localization at finite $N$, irrespective of the parity of $N$. Moreover, the localization length scales linearly with N, implying no Anderson localization \textit{only} at $…
We show that the low temperature phase of a conjugate pair of uncoupled, quantum chaotic, nonhermitian systems such as the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model or the Ginibre ensemble of random matrices are dominated by replica symmetry breaking configurations with a nearly flat free energy that terminates in a first order phase transition. In the case of the SYK model, we show explicitly that the spectrum of the effective replica theory has a gap. These features are strikingly similar to those induced by wormholes in the gravity path integral which suggests a close relation between both configuratio…
We study the low frequency spectra of complex Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models at general densities. The analysis applies also to SU($M$) magnets with random exchange at large $M$. The spectral densities are computed by numerical analysis of the saddle point equations on the real frequency ($ω$) axis at zero temperature ($T$). The asymptotic low $ω$ behaviors are found to be in excellent agreement with the scaling dimensions of irrelevant operators which perturb the conformally invariant critical states. Of possible experimental interest is our computation of the universal spin spectral weight o…
We describe numerous properties of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model for complex fermions with $N\gg 1$ flavors and a global U(1) charge. We provide a general definition of the charge in the $(G,Σ)$ formalism, and compute its universal relation to the infrared asymmetry of the Green function. The same relation is obtained by a renormalization theory. The conserved charge contributes a compact scalar field to the effective action, from which we derive the many-body density of states and extract the charge compressibility. We compute the latter via three distinct numerical methods and obtain consisten…
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is a conjecture on the nature of isolated quantum systems that guarantees the thermal behavior of subsystems when it is satisfied. ETH has been tested in various forms on a number of local many-body interacting systems. Here we examine the validity of ETH in a class of nonlocal disordered many-body interacting systems --- the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev Majorana (SYK) models --- that may be tuned from chaotic behavior to integrability. Our analysis shows that SYK$_4$ (with quartic couplings), which is maximally chaotic in the large system size limit, satisf…
We study a quantum mechanical model proposed by Sachdev, Ye and Kitaev. The model consists of $N$ Majorana fermions with random interactions of a few fermions at a time. It it tractable in the large $N$ limit, where the classical variable is a bilocal fermion bilinear. The model becomes strongly interacting at low energies where it develops an emergent conformal symmetry. We study two and four point functions of the fundamental fermions. This provides the spectrum of physical excitations for the bilocal field. The emergent conformal symmetry is a reparametrization symmetry, which is spontaneou…
The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model describes electrons with random and all-to-all interactions, and realizes a many-body state without quasiparticle excitations, and a non-vanishing extensive entropy $S_0$ in the zero temperature limit. Its low energy theory coincides the low energy theory of the near-extremal charged black holes with Bekenstein-Hawking entropy $S_0$. Several mesoscopic experimental configurations realizing SYK quantum dynamics over a significant intermediate temperature scale have been proposed. We investigate quantum thermoelectric transport in such configurations, and descri…
The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model provides an uncommon example of a chaotic theory that can be analysed analytically. In the deep infrared limit, the original model has an emergent conformal (reparametrisation) symmetry that is broken both spontaneously and explicitly. The explicit breaking of this symmetry comes about due to pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone modes that are not exact zero-modes of the model. In this paper, we study a version of the model which preserves the reparametrisation symmetry at all length scales. We study the heavy-light correlation functions of the operators in the conformal sp…
Entanglement is one of the most important concepts in quantum physics. We review recent progress in understanding the quantum entanglement in many-body systems using large-$N$ solvable models: the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model and its generalizations. We present the study of entanglement entropy in the original SYK Model using three different approaches: the exact diagonalization, the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, and the path-integral representation. For coupled SYK models, the entanglement entropy shows linear growth and saturation at the thermal value. The saturation is related to r…
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) explains how closed unitary quantum systems can exhibit thermal behavior in pure states. In this work we examine a recently proposed microscopic model of a black hole in AdS$_2$, the so-called Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. We show that this model satisfies the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis by solving the system in exact diagonalization. Using these results we also study the behavior, in eigenstates, of various measures of thermalization and scrambling of information. We establish that two-point functions in finite-energy eigenstates approx…
Periodically driven quantum matter can realize exotic dynamical phases. In order to understand how ubiquitous and robust these phases are, it is pertinent to investigate the heating dynamics of generic interacting quantum systems. Here we study the thermalization in a periodically-driven generalized Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK)-model, which realizes a crossover from a heavy Fermi liquid (FL) to a non-Fermi liquid (NFL) at a tunable energy scale. Developing an exact field theoretic approach, we determine two distinct regimes in the heating dynamics. While the NFL heats exponentially and thermalizes …
The periodic Anderson model is a classic theoretical model for understanding novel physics in heavy fermion systems. Here, we modify it with the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev interaction, (random all-to-all interaction) thus the resultant model admits an exact solution at large-$N$ (e.g. spin flavor) limit. By analytical field theory arguments and numerical calculations, we establish that the system supports a low-temperature (heavy) Fermi liquid and more interesting a non-Fermi liquid solution at elevated temperature/energy. For physical observable, the latter one contributes a sharp peak at Fermi energy…
Correlation between phase stiffness and condensation energy across the non-Fermi to Fermi-liquid crossover in the Yukawa-Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model on a lattice
We study the SYK$_4$ model with a weak SYK$_2$ term of magnitude $Γ$ beyond the simplest perturbative limit considered previously. For intermediate values of the perturbation strength, $J/N \ll Γ\ll J/\sqrt{N}$, fluctuations of the Schwarzian mode are suppressed, and the SYK$_4$ mean-field solution remains valid beyond the timescale $t_0 \sim N/J$ up to $t_* \sim J/Γ^2$. Out-of-time-order correlation function displays at short time intervals exponential growth with maximal Lyapunov exponent $2πT$, but its prefactor scales as $T$ at low temperatures $T \leq Γ$.
The 0+1-d Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) fermionic model attracts nowadays a wide spread interest of the Condensed Matter community, as a benchmark toy model for strong electron correlation and non Fermi Liquid behavior. It is exactly solvable in the infrared limit and reproduces the linear dependence of the resistivity on temperature T, in linear response, typical of the strange metal phase of High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) materials. The breaking of its conformal symmetry requires ultraviolet corrections for a faithful description of its pseudo Goldstone Modes. Extension of the model to hig…
The exactly-solvable Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model has recently received considerable attention in both condensed matter and high energy physics because it describes quantum matter without quasiparticles, while being at the same time the holographic dual of a quantum black hole. In this Letter, we examine SYK-based charging protocols of quantum batteries with N quantum cells. Extensive numerical calculations based on exact diagonalization for N up to 16 strongly suggest that the optimal charging power of our SYK quantum batteries displays a super-extensive scaling with N that stems from genuin…
The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model describes interacting fermionic zero modes in zero spatial dimensions, e.g. quantum dot, with interactions strong enough to completely washout quasiparticle excitations in the infrared. In this paper, we consider the complex-valued SYK model at initial temperature $T$ and chemical potential $μ$ coupled to a large reservoir by a quench at time $t=0$. The reservoir is kept at zero temperature and charge neutrality. We find that the dynamics of the discharging process of the SYK quantum dot reveals a distinctive characteristic of the SYK non-Fermi liquid (nFl) st…
The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model is an all-to-all interacting Majorana fermion model for many-body quantum chaos and the holographic correspondence. Here we construct fermionic all-to-all Floquet quantum circuits of random four-body gates designed to capture key features of SYK dynamics. Our circuits can be built using local ingredients in Majorana devices, namely charging-mediated interactions and braiding Majorana zero modes. This offers an analog-digital route to SYK quantum simulations that reconciles all-to-all interactions with the topological protection of Majorana zero modes, a key fe…
We study the nonequilibrium quench dynamics of a mixed Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, with competing two bodies random interactions leading to maximally chaotic Non-Fermi Liquid dynamics and a single body term which dominates at low temperatures and leads to Fermi liquid behavior. For different quench protocols, including sudden switching of two-body interaction and double quench protocols, we solve the large $N$ real-time Dyson equation on the Keldysh contour and compute the dynamics of Green's functions from which we obtain effective temperature and relaxation rates. We show that the model thermal…
