Scaling laws of the out-of-time-order correlators at the transition to the spontaneous PT -symmetry breaking in a Floquet system

Abstract

We investigate both numerically and analytically the dynamics of out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) in a non-Hermitian kicked rotor model, addressing the scaling laws of the time dependence of OTOCs at the transition to the spontaneous $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry breaking. In the unbroken phase of $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry, the OTOCs increase monotonically and eventually saturate with time, demonstrating the freezing of information scrambling. Just beyond the phase transition points, the OTOCs increase in the power laws of time, with the exponent being larger than 2. Interestingly, the quadratic growth of OTOCs with time emerges when the system is far beyond the phase transition points. The above numerical findings are validated by our theoretical analysis, which provides a general framework with important implications for Floquet engineering and information scrambling in chaotic systems.