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Title: Nonlinear sigma model approach to many-body quantum chaos: Regularized and unregularized out-of-time-ordered correlators

Journal Article · · Physical Review B
 [1];  [1]
  1. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)

Here, the out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) have been proposed and widely used recently as a tool to define and describe many-body quantum chaos. Here, we develop the Keldysh nonlinear sigma model technique to calculate these correlators in interacting disordered metals. In particular, we focus on the regularized and unregularized OTOCs. The calculation of the rate of OTOCs' exponential growth is reminiscent to that of the Altshuler-Aronov-Khmelnitskii dephasing rate in interacting metals, but here it involves two replicas of the system (two “worlds”). The intraworld contributions reproduce the Altshuler-Aronov-Khmelnitskii dephasing (that would correspond to a decay of the correlator), while the interworld terms provide a term of the opposite sign that exceeds dephasing. Consequently, both regularized and unregularized OTOCs grow exponentially in time, but surprisingly we find that the corresponding many-body Lyapunov exponents are different. For the regularized correlator, we reproduce an earlier perturbation theory result for the Lyapunov exponent that satisfies the Maldacena-Shenker-Stanford bound. However, the Lyapunov exponent of the unregularized correlator parametrically exceeds the bound, is not a reliable indicator of many-body quantum chaos as it contains additional contributions from elastic scattering events due to virtual processes that should not contribute to many-body chaos. These results bring up an important general question of the physical meaning of the OTOCs often used in calculations and proofs. We briefly discuss possible connections of the OTOCs to observables in quantum interference effects and level statistics via a generalization of the Bohigas-Giannoni-Schmit conjecture to many-body chaotic systems.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0001911
OSTI ID:
1482111
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1482151
Journal Information:
Physical Review B, Vol. 98, Issue 20; ISSN 2469-9950
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 33 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (5)

Scrambling in the Dicke model journal April 2019
Cavity-QED simulator of slow and fast scrambling journal May 2019
Chaos and the dynamics of information in dissipative electronic systems journal September 2019
Operator Dynamics in Brownian Quantum Circuit text January 2018
Scrambling in the Dicke model text January 2018

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