Butterfly Velocity Research Articles

Many-body chaos and energy dynamics in holography

Recent developments have indicated that in addition to out-of-time ordered correlation functions (OTOCs), quantum chaos also has a sharp manifestation in the thermal energy density two-point functions, at least for maximally chaotic systems. The manifestation, referred to as pole-skipping, concerns the analytic behaviour of energy density two-point functions around a special point ω = iλ, k = iλ/vB in the complex frequency and momentum plane. Here λ and vB are the Lyapunov exponent and butterfly velocity characterising quantum chaos. In this paper we provide an argument that the phenomenon of pole-skipping is universal for general finite temperature systems dual to Einstein gravity coupled to matter. In doing so we uncover a surprising universal feature of the linearised Einstein equations around a static black hole geometry. We also study analytically a holographic axion model where all of the features of our general argument as well as the pole-skipping phenomenon can be verified in detail.

Strongly Coupled Anisotropic Gauge Theories and Holography.

We initiate a nonperturbative study of anisotropic, nonconformal, and confining gauge theories that are holographically realized in gravity by generic Einstein-axion-dilaton systems. In the vacuum, our solutions describe renormalization group flows from a conformal field theory in the UV to generic scaling solutions in the IR with generic hyperscaling violation and dynamical exponents θ and z. We formulate a generalization of the holographic c theorem to the anisotropic case. At finite temperature, we discover that the anisotropic deformation reduces the confinement-deconfinement phase transition temperature suggesting a possible alternative explanation of inverse magnetic catalysis solely based on anisotropy. We also study transport and diffusion properties in anisotropic theories and observe, in particular, that the butterfly velocity that characterizes both diffusion and growth of chaos transverse to the anisotropic direction saturates a constant value in the IR which can exceed the bound given by the conformal value.

Diffusivities bounds in the presence of Weyl corrections

In this paper, we investigate the behavior of the thermoelectric DC conductivities in the presence of Weyl corrections with momentum dissipation in the incoherent limit. Moreover, we compute the butterfly velocity and study the charge and energy diffusion with broken translational symmetry. Our results show that the Weyl coupling γ, violates the bounds on the charge and energy diffusivity. It is also shown that the Weyl corrections violate the bound on the DC electrical conductivity in the incoherent limit.

Butterfly velocity in quadratic gravity

We present a systematic procedure of finding the shock wave equation in anisotropic spacetime of quadratic gravity with Lagrangian . The general formula of the butterfly velocity is derived. We show that the shock wave equation in the planar, spherical or hyperbolic black hole spacetime of Einstein–Gauss–Bonnet gravity is the same as that in Einstein gravity if the space is isotropic. We consider the modified AdS spacetime deformed by the leading correction of the quadratic curvatures and find that the fourth order derivative shock wave equation leads to two butterfly velocities if . We also show that the butterfly velocity in the D = 4 planar black hole is not corrected by the quadratic gravity if , which includes the R2 gravity. In general, the correction of butterfly velocity by the quadratic gravity may be positive or negative, depending on the values of α, β, γ and temperature. We also investigate the butterfly velocity in the Gauss–Bonnet massive gravity.

Chaos, diffusivity, and spreading of entanglement in magnetic branes, and the strengthening of the internal interaction

We use holographic methods to study several chaotic properties of a super Yang-Mills theory at temperature T in the presence of a background magnetic field of constant strength B. The field theory we work on has a renormalization flow between a fixed point in the ultraviolet and another in the infrared, occurring in such a way that the energy at which the crossover takes place is a monotonically increasing function of the dimensionless ratio ℬ/T2. By considering shock waves in the bulk of the dual gravitational theory, and varying ℬ/T2, we study how several chaos-related properties of the system behave while the theory they live in follows the renormalization flow. In particular, we show that the entanglement and butterfly velocities generically increase in the infrared theory, violating the previously suggested upper bounds but never surpassing the speed of light. We also investigate the recent proposal relating the butterfly velocity with diffusion coefficients. We find that electric diffusion constants respect the lower bound proposed by Blake. All our results seem to consistently indicate that the global effect of the magnetic field is to strengthen the internal interaction of the system.

Conjecture on the butterfly velocity across a quantum phase transition

We study an anisotropic holographic bottom-up model displaying a quantum phase transition (QPT) between a topologically trivial insulator and a non-trivial Weyl semimetal phase. We analyze the properties of quantum chaos in the quantum critical region. We do not find any universal property of the Butterfly velocity across the QPT. In particular it turns out to be either maximized or minimized at the quantum critical point depending on the direction of propagation. We observe that instead of the butterfly velocity, it is the dimensionless information screening length that is always maximized at a quantum critical point. We argue that the null-energy condition (NEC) is the underlying reason for the upper bound, which now is just a simple combination of the number of spatial dimensions and the anisotropic scaling parameter.

Black Hole Scrambling from Hydrodynamics

We argue that the gravitational shock wave computation used to extract the scrambling rate in strongly coupled quantum theories with a holographic dual is directly related to probing the system's hydrodynamic sound modes. The information recovered from the shock wave can be reconstructed in terms of purely diffusionlike, linearized gravitational waves at the horizon of a single-sided black hole with specific regularity-enforced imaginary values of frequency and momentum. In two-derivative bulk theories, this horizon "diffusion" can be related to late-time momentum diffusion via a simple relation, which ceases to hold in higher-derivative theories. We then show that the same values of imaginary frequency and momentum follow from a dispersion relation of a hydrodynamic sound mode. The frequency, momentum, and group velocity give the holographic Lyapunov exponent and the butterfly velocity. Moreover, at this special point along the sound dispersion relation curve, the residue of the retarded longitudinal stress-energy tensor two-point function vanishes. This establishes a direct link between a hydrodynamic sound mode at an analytically continued, imaginary momentum and the holographic butterfly effect. Furthermore, our results imply that infinitely strongly coupled, large-N_{c} holographic theories exhibit properties similar to classical dilute gases; there, late-time equilibration and early-time scrambling are also controlled by the same dynamics.

Scrambling in the quantum Lifshitz model

We study signatures of chaos in the quantum Lifshitz model through out-of-time ordered correlators (OTOC) of current operators. This model is a free scalar field theory with dynamical critical exponent z = 2. It describes the quantum phase transition in 2D systems, such as quantum dimer models, between a phase with a uniform ground state to another one with spontaneously broken translation invariance. At the lowest temperatures the chaotic dynamics are dominated by a marginally irrelevant operator which induces a temperature dependent stiffness term. The numerical computations of OTOC exhibit a non-zero Lyapunov exponent (LE) in a wide range of temperatures and interaction strengths. The LE (in units of temperature) is a weakly temperature-dependent function; it vanishes at weak interaction and saturates for strong interaction. The Butterfly velocity increases monotonically with interaction strength in the studied region while remaining smaller than the interaction-induced velocity/stiffness.

Operator Hydrodynamics, OTOCs, and Entanglement Growth in Systems without Conservation Laws

Thermalization and scrambling are the subject of much recent study from the perspective of many-body quantum systems with locally bounded Hilbert spaces (`spin chains'), quantum field theory and holography. We tackle this problem in 1D spin-chains evolving under random local unitary circuits and prove a number of exact results on the behavior of out-of-time-ordered commutators (OTOCs), and entanglement growth in this setting. These results follow from the observation that the spreading of operators in random circuits is described by a `hydrodynamical' equation of motion, despite the fact that random unitary circuits do not have locally conserved quantities (e.g., no conserved energy). In this hydrodynamic picture quantum information travels in a front with a `butterfly velocity' $v_{\text{B}}$ that is smaller than the light cone velocity of the system, while the front itself broadens diffusively in time. The OTOC increases sharply after the arrival of the light cone, but we do \emph{not} observe a prolonged exponential regime of the form $\sim e^{\lambda_\text{L}(t-x/v)}$ for a fixed Lyapunov exponent $\lambda_\text{L}$. We find that the diffusive broadening of the front has important consequences for entanglement growth, leading to an entanglement velocity that can be significantly smaller than the butterfly velocity. We conjecture that the hydrodynamical description applies to more generic ergodic systems and support this by verifying numerically that the diffusive broadening of the operator wavefront also holds in a more traditional non-random Floquet spin-chain. We also compare our results to Clifford circuits, which have less rich hydrodynamics and consequently trivial OTOC behavior, but which can nevertheless exhibit linear entanglement growth and thermalization.

Weyl corrections to diffusion and chaos in holography

Using holographic methods in the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-axion (EMDA) theory, it was conjectured that the thermal diffusion in a strongly coupled metal without quasi-particles saturates an universal lower bound that is associated with the chaotic property of the system at infrared (IR) fixed points [1]. In this paper, we investigate the thermal transport and quantum chaos in the EMDA theory with a small Weyl coupling term. It is found that the Weyl coupling correct the thermal diffusion constant DQ and butterfly velocity vB in different ways, hence resulting in a modified relation between the two at IR fixed points. Unlike that in the EMDA case, our results show that the ratio DQ/(vB2τL) always contains a non-universal Weyl correction which depends also on the bulk fields as long as the U(1) current is marginally relevant in the IR.

Boomerang RG flows with intermediate conformal invariance

For a class of D = 5 holographic models we construct boomerang RG flow solutions that start in the UV at an AdS5 vacuum and end up at the same vacuum in the IR. The RG flows are driven by deformations by relevant operators that explicitly break translation invariance. For specific models, such that they admit another AdS5 solution, AdS5c, we show that for large enough deformations the RG flows approach an intermediate scaling regime with approximate conformal invariance governed by AdS5c. For these flows we calculate the holographic entanglement entropy and the entropic c-function for the RG flows. The latter is not monotonic, but it does encapsulate the degrees of freedom in each scaling region. For a different set of models, we find boomerang RG flows with intermediate scaling governed by an AdS2 × ℝ3 solution which breaks translation invariance. Furthermore, for large enough deformations these models have interesting and novel thermal insulating ground states for which the entropy vanishes as the temperature goes to zero, but not as a power-law. Remarkably, the thermal diffusivity and the butterfly velocity for these new insulating ground states are related via D = EvB2/(2πT), with E(T) → 0.5 as T → 0.

Holographic butterfly velocities in brane geometry and Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity with matters

In the first part of the paper we generalize the butterfly velocity formula to anisotropic spacetime. We apply the formula to evaluate the butterfly velocities in M-branes, D-branes and strings backgrounds. We show that the butterfly velocities in M2-branes, M5-branes and the intersection M2$\bot$M5 equal to those in fundamental strings, D4-branes and the intersection F1$\bot$D4 backgrounds, respectively. These observations lead us to conjecture that the butterfly velocity is generally invariant under a double-dimensional reduction. In the second part of the paper, we study the butterfly velocity for Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity with arbitrary matter fields. A general formula is obtained. We use this formula to compute the butterfly velocities in different backgrounds and discuss the associated properties.

Quasi-topological Ricci polynomial gravities

Quasi-topological terms in gravity can be viewed as those that give no contribution to the equations of motion for a special subclass of metric ansätze. They therefore play no rôle in constructing these solutions, but can affect the general perturbations. We consider Einstein gravity extended with Ricci tensor polynomial invariants, which admits Einstein metrics with appropriate effective cosmological constants as its vacuum solutions. We construct three types of quasi-topological gravities. The first type is for the most general static metrics with spherical, toroidal or hyperbolic isometries. The second type is for the special static metrics where gttgrr is constant. The third type is the linearized quasitopological gravities on the Einstein metrics. We construct and classify results that are either dependent on or independent of dimensions, up to the tenth order. We then consider a subset of these three types and obtain Lovelock-like quasi-topological gravities, that are independent of the dimensions. The linearized gravities on Einstein metrics on all dimensions are simply Einstein and hence ghost free. The theories become quasi-topological on static metrics in one specific dimension, but non-trivial in others. We also focus on the quasi-topological Ricci cubic invariant in four dimensions as a specific example to study its effect on holography, including shear viscosity, thermoelectric DC conductivities and butterfly velocity. In particular, we find that the holographic diffusivity bounds can be violated by the quasi-topological terms, which can induce an extra massive mode that yields a butterfly velocity unbound above.

Complexity-action duality of the shock wave geometry in a massive gravity theory

On the holographic complexity dual to the bulk action, we investigate the action growth for a shock wave geometry in a massive gravity theory within the Wheeler-De Witt (WDW) patch at the late time limit. For a global shock wave, the graviton mass does not affect the action growth in the bulk, i.e. the complexity on the boundary, showing that the action growth (complexity) is the same for both the Einstein gravity and the massive gravity. Nevertheless, for a local shock wave that depends on transverse coordinates, the action growth (complexity) is proportional to the butterfly velocity for the two gravity theories, but the butterfly velocity of the massive gravity theory is smaller than that of the Einstein gravity theory, indicating that the action growth (complexity) of the massive gravity is depressed by the graviton mass. In addition, we extend the black hole thermodynamics of the massive gravity and obtain the right Smarr formula.

Criticality in third order lovelock gravity and butterfly effect

We study third order Lovelock Gravity in D=7 at the critical point which three (A)dS vacua degenerate into one. We see there is not propagating graviton at the critical point. And also we compute the butterfly velocity for this theory at the critical point by considering the shock wave solutions near horizon, this is important to note that although there is no propagating graviton at the critical point, due to boundary gravitons the butterfly velocity is non-zero. Finally we observe that the butterfly velocity for third order Lovelock Gravity at the critical point in D=7 is less than the butterfly velocity for Einstein–Gauss–Bonnet Gravity at the critical point in D=7 which is less than the butterfly velocity in D = 7 for Einstein Gravity, v_{B}^{E.H}>v_{B}^{E.G.B}>v_{B}^{3rd,,Lovelock} . Maybe we can conclude that by adding higher order curvature corrections to Einstein Gravity the butterfly velocity decreases.

Thermal diffusivity and butterfly velocity in anisotropic Q-lattice models

We study a relation between the thermal diffusivity (DT ) and two quantum chaotic properties, Lyapunov time (τL) and butterfly velocity (vB ) in strongly correlated systems by using a holographic method. Recently, it was shown that {mathbb{E}}_i:={D}_{T,i}/left({v}_{{}^{B,i}}^2{tau}_Lright)left(i=x,yright) is universal in the sense that it is determined only by some scaling exponents of the IR metric in the low temperature limit regardless of the matter fields and ultraviolet data. Inspired by this observation, by analyzing the anisotropic IR scaling geometry carefully, we find the concrete expressions for {mathbb{E}}_i in terms of the critical dynamical exponents zi in each direction, {mathbb{E}}_i={z}_i/2left({z}_i-1right) . Furthermore, we find the lower bound of {mathbb{E}}_i is always 1/2, which is not affected by anisotropy, contrary to the η/s case. However, there may be an upper bound determined by given fixed anisotropy.

Delocalizing entanglement of anisotropic black branes

We study the mutual information between pairs of regions on the two asymptotic boundaries of maximally extended anisotropic black branes. This quantity characterizes the local pattern of entanglement of the thermofield double states which are dual to these geometries. We analyze the disruption of the mutual information in anisotropic shock wave geometries and show that the entanglement velocity plays an important role in this phenomenon. Moreover, we compute several chaos-related properties of this system, such as the entanglement velocity, the butterfly velocity, and the scrambling time. We find that the butterfly velocity and the entanglement velocity violate the upper bounds proposed in [1-3], but remain bounded by their corresponding values in the infrared effective theory.

Diffusion in higher dimensional SYK model with complex fermions

We construct a new higher dimensional SYK model with complex fermions on bipartite lattices. As an extension of the original zero-dimensional SYK model, we focus on the one-dimension case, and similar Hamiltonian can be obtained in higher dimensions. This model has a conserved U(1) fermion number Q and a conjugate chemical potential μ. We evaluate the thermal and charge diffusion constants via large q expansion at low temperature limit. The results show that the diffusivity depends on the ratio of free Majorana fermions to Majorana fermions with SYK interactions. The transport properties and the butterfly velocity are accordingly calculated at low temperature. The specific heat and the thermal conductivity are proportional to the temperature. The electrical resistivity also has a linear temperature dependence term.

Charged BTZ-like black hole solutions and the diffusivity-butterfly velocity relation

We show that there exists a class of charged BTZ-like black hole solutions in Lifshitz spacetime with a hyperscaling violating factor. The charged BTZ black hole is characterized by a charge-dependent logarithmic term in the metric function. As concrete examples, we give five such charged BTZ-like black hole solutions and the standard charged BTZ metric can be regarded as a special instance of them. In order to check the recent proposed universal relations between diffusivity and the butterfly velocity, we first compute the diffusion constants of the standard charged BTZ black holes and then extend our calculation to arbitrary dimension d, exponents z and θ. Remarkably, the case d = θ and z = 2 is a very special in that the charge diffusion Dc is a constant and the energy diffusion De might be ill-defined, but vB2τ diverges. We also compute the diffusion constants for the case that the DC conductivity is finite but in the absence of momentum relaxation.

Butterfly effect in 3D gravity

We study the butterfly effect by considering shock wave solutions near the horizon of the AdS black brane in some of 3-dimensional Gravity models including; 3D Einstein Gravity, Minimal Massive 3D Gravity, New Massive Gravity, Generalized Massive Gravity, Born-Infeld 3D Gravity and New Bi-Gravity. We calculate the butterfly velocities of these models and also we consider the critical points and different limits in some of these models. By studying the butterfly effect in the Generalized Massive Gravity, we observe a correspondence between the butterfly velocities and right-left moving degrees of freedom or the central charges of the dual 2D Conformal Field Theories.