Thouless Time Research Articles

Many-body quantum chaos in mixtures of multiple species.

We study spectral correlations in many-body quantum mixtures of fermions, bosons, and qubits with periodically kicked spreading and mixing of species. We take two types of mixing, namely, Jaynes-Cummings and Rabi, respectively, satisfying and breaking the conservation of a total number of species. We analytically derive the generating Hamiltonians whose spectral properties determine the spectral form factor in the leading order. We further analyze the system-size (L) scaling of Thouless time t^{*}, beyond which the spectral form factor follows the prediction of random matrix theory. The L dependence of t^{*} crosses over from lnL to L^{2} with an increasing Jaynes-Cummings mixing between qubits and fermions or bosons in a finite-size chain, and it finally settles to t^{*}∝O(L^{2}) in the thermodynamic limit for any mixing strength. The Rabi mixing between qubits and fermions leads to t^{*}∝O(lnL), previously predicted for single species of qubits or fermions without total-number conservation.

Super-maximal chaos and instability

An upper bound on Lyapunov exponent of a thermal many body quantum system has been conjectured recently. It would be useful to develop a physical understanding of what prevents a system from violating this bound. In this article we suggest violation of this bound leads to instability. Our suggestion is based on careful scrutiny of the arguments that established the bound. We also present a physical system where this phenomenon is manifested. In the stable regime, along with incoherent metallic phase, the system exhibits another novel phase, where transport is controlled neither by quasi-particles nor by diffusion. At the phase transition, diffusion coefficient, butterfly velocity and Thouless time diverges.

Many-body quantum chaos in stroboscopically-driven cold atoms

In quantum chaotic systems, the spectral form factor (SFF), defined as the Fourier transform of two-level spectral correlation function, is known to follow random matrix theory (RMT), namely a ‘ramp’ followed by a ‘plateau’ in late times. Recently, a generic early-time deviation from RMT, so-called the ‘bump’, was shown to exist in random quantum circuits as toy models for many-body quantum systems. We demonstrate the existence of ‘bump-ramp-plateau’ behavior in the SFF for a number of paradigmatic and stroboscopically-driven 1D cold-atom models: spinless and spin-1/2 Bose-Hubbard models, and nonintegrable spin-1 condensate with contact or dipolar interactions. We find that the scaling of the many-body Thouless time tTh —the onset of RMT—, and the bump amplitude are more sensitive to variations in atom number than the lattice size regardless of the hyperfine structure, the symmetry classes, or the choice of driving protocol. Moreover, tTh scaling and the increase of the bump amplitude in atom number are significantly slower in spinor gases than interacting bosons in 1D optical lattices, demonstrating the role of locality. We obtain universal scaling functions of SFF which suggest power-law behavior for the bump regime in quantum chaotic cold-atom systems, and propose an interference measurement protocol.

Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model: Non-self-averaging properties of the energy spectrum

The short time (large energy) behavior of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model (SYK) is one of the main motivation to the growing interest garnered by this model. True chaotic behaviour sets in at the Thouless time, which can be extracted from the energy spectrum. In order to do so, it is necessary to unfold the spectrum, i.e., to filter out global tendencies. Using a simple ensemble average for unfolding results in a parametically low estimation of the Thouless energy. By examining the behavior of the spectrum as the distribution of the matrix elements is changed into a log-normal distribution it is shown that the sample to sample level spacing variance determines this estimation of the Thouless energy. Using the singular value decomposition method, SVD, which filters out these sample to sample fluctuations, the Thouless energy becomes parametrically much larger, essentially of order of the band width. It is shown that the SYK model in non-self-averaging even in the thermodynamic limit which must be taken into account in considering its short time properties.

Spectral form factor in a minimal bosonic model of many-body quantum chaos.

We study spectral form factor in periodically kicked bosonic chains. We consider a family of models where a Hamiltonian with the terms diagonal in the Fock space basis, including random chemical potentials and pairwise interactions, is kicked periodically by another Hamiltonian with nearest-neighbor hopping and pairing terms. We show that, for intermediate-range interactions, the random phase approximation can be used to rewrite the spectral form factor in terms of a bistochastic many-body process generated by an effective bosonic Hamiltonian. In the particle-number conserving case, i.e., when pairing terms are absent, the effective Hamiltonian has a non-Abelian SU(1,1) symmetry, resulting in universal quadratic scaling of the Thouless time with the system size, irrespective of the particle number. This is a consequence of degenerate symmetry multiplets of the subleading eigenvalue of the effective Hamiltonian and is broken by the pairing terms. In such a case, we numerically find a nontrivial systematic system-size dependence of the Thouless time, in contrast to a related recent study for kicked fermionic chains.

A constructive theory of the numerically accessible many-body localized to thermal crossover

The many-body localised (MBL) to thermal crossover observed in exact diagonalisation studies remains poorly understood as the accessible system sizes are too small to be in an asymptotic scaling regime. We develop a model of the crossover in short 1D chains in which the MBL phase is destabilised by the formation of many-body resonances. The model reproduces several properties of the numerically observed crossover, including an apparent correlation length exponent \nu=1ν=1, exponential growth of the Thouless time with disorder strength, linear drift of the critical disorder strength with system size, scale-free resonances, apparent 1/\omega1/ω dependence of disorder-averaged spectral functions, and sub-thermal entanglement entropy of small subsystems. In the crossover, resonances induced by a local perturbation are rare at numerically accessible system sizes LL which are smaller than a \lambdaλ. For L \gg \sqrt{\lambda}L≫λ (in lattice units), resonances typically overlap, and this model does not describe the asymptotic transition. The model further reproduces controversial numerical observations which Refs. claimed to be inconsistent with MBL. We thus argue that the numerics to date is consistent with a MBL phase in the thermodynamic limit.

Subdiffusive Thouless time scaling in the Anderson model on random regular graphs

The scaling of the Thouless time with system size is of fundamental importance to characterize dynamical properties in quantum systems. In this work, we study the scaling of the Thouless time in the Anderson model on random regular graphs with on-site disorder. We determine the Thouless time from two main quantities: the spectral form factor and the power spectrum. Both quantities probe the long-range spectral correlations in the system and allow us to determine the Thouless time as the time scale after which the system is well described by random matrix theory. We find that the scaling of the Thouless time is consistent with the existence of a sub-diffusive regime anticipating the localized phase. Furthermore, to reduce finite-size effects, we break energy conservation by introducing a Floquet version of the model and show that it hosts a similar sub-diffusive regime.

Hydrodynamic Theory of the Connected Spectral form Factor

One manifestation of quantum chaos is a random-matrix-like fine-grained energy spectrum. Prior to the inverse level spacing time, random matrix theory predicts a “ramp” of increasing variance in the connected part of the spectral form factor. However, in realistic quantum chaotic systems, the finite-time dynamics of the spectral form factor is much richer, with the pure random matrix ramp appearing only at sufficiently late time. In this article, we present a hydrodynamic theory of the connected spectral form factor prior to the inverse level spacing time. We first derive a general formula for the spectral form factor of a system with almost-conserved sectors in terms of return probabilities and spectral form factors within each sector. Next we argue that the theory of fluctuating hydrodynamics can be adapted from the usual Schwinger-Keldysh contour to the periodic time setting needed for the spectral form factor, and we show explicitly that the general formula is recovered in the case of energy diffusion. We also initiate a study of interaction effects in this modified hydrodynamic framework and show how the Thouless time defined as the time required for the spectral form factor to approach the pure random matrix result is controlled by the slow hydrodynamics modes. We then extend the formalism to Floquet systems, where a ramp is expected but with a different coefficient, and we derive a crossover formula from the Hamiltonian ramp to the Floquet ramp when the Floquet drive is weak. Taken together, these results establish an effective field theory of chaotic spectral correlations which predicts the random matrix ramp at late time and computes corrections to it at earlier times.6 MoreReceived 15 December 2020Revised 12 January 2022Accepted 10 February 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.12.021009Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasQuantum chaosPhysical Systems1-dimensional spin chainsTechniquesRandom matrix theorySachdev-Ye-Kitaev modelU(N) symmetryCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsNonlinear DynamicsFluid Dynamics

Spontaneous symmetry breaking, spectral statistics, and the ramp

Ensembles of quantum chaotic systems are expected to exhibit energy eigenvalues with random-matrix-like level repulsion between pairs of energies separated by less than the inverse Thouless time. Recent research has shown that exact and approximate global symmetries of a system have clear signatures in these spectral statistics, enhancing the spectral form factor or correspondingly weakening level repulsion. This paper extends those results to the case of spontaneous symmetry breaking and shows that, surprisingly, spontaneously breaking a symmetry further enhances the spectral form factor. For both random-matrix-theory--inspired toy models and models where the symmetry breaking has a description in terms of fluctuating hydrodynamics, we obtain formulas for this enhancement for arbitrary symmetry breaking patterns, including broken Abelian symmetries ${Z}_{n}$ and $U(1)$ and partially or fully broken non-Abelian symmetries.

Subdiffusion and Many-Body Quantum Chaos with Kinetic Constraints.

We investigate the spectral and transport properties of many-body quantum systems with conserved charges and kinetic constraints. Using random unitary circuits, we compute ensemble-averaged spectral form factors and linear-response correlation functions, and find that their characteristic timescales are given by the inverse gap of an effective Hamiltonian-or equivalently, a transfer matrix describing a classical Markov process. Our approach allows us to connect directly the Thouless time, t_{Th}, determined by the spectral form factor, to transport properties and linear-response correlators. Using tensor network methods, we determine the dynamical exponent z for a number of constrained, conserving models. We find universality classes with diffusive, subdiffusive, quasilocalized, and localized dynamics, depending on the severity of the constraints. In particular, we show that quantum systems with "Fredkin" constraints exhibit anomalous transport with dynamical exponent z≃8/3.

From operator statistics to wormholes

For a generic quantum many-body system, the quantum ergodic regime is defined as the limit in which the spectrum of the system resembles that of a random matrix theory (RMT) in the corresponding symmetry class. In this paper we analyse the time dependence of correlation functions of operators. We study them in the ergodic limit as well as their approach to the ergodic limit which is controlled by non-universal massive modes. An effective field theory (EFT) corresponding to the causal symmetry and its breaking describes the ergodic phase. We demonstrate that the resulting Goldstone-mode theory has a topological expansion, analogous to the one described in arXiv:2008.02271 with added operator sources, whose leading non-trivial topologies give rise to the universal ramp seen in correlation functions. The ergodic behaviour of operators in our EFT is seen to result from a combination of RMT-like spectral statistics and Haar averaging over wave-functions. Furthermore we analytically capture the plateau behaviour by taking into account the contribution of a second saddle point. Our main interest are quantum many-body systems with holographic duals and we explicitly establish the validity of the EFT description in the SYK-class of models, starting from their microscopic description. By studying the tower of massive modes above the Goldstone sector we get a detailed understanding of how the ergodic EFT phase is approached and derive the relevant Thouless time scales. We point out that the topological expansion can be reinterpreted in terms of contributions of bulk wormholes and baby-universes.

Localization in the kicked Ising chain

Determining the border between ergodic and localized behavior is of central interest for interacting many-body systems. We consider here the recently quite popular kicked Ising chain. A convenient description of such a many-body system is achieved by the dual operator that evolves the system in contrast to the time-evolution operator not in time but particle direction. We focus in this paper on the largest eigenvalue of a function of the dual operator. It is identified to be a convenient tool to determine if the system shows ergodic or many-body localized features. We analytically explain the eigenvalue structure by perturbation theory in the vicinity of the noninteracting system. This result agrees with the numerics for small times in a previous work [Braun et al., Phys. Rev. E 101, 052201 (2020)]. Given that a direct numerical computation of this largest eigenvalue is only possible for small times, another achievement of this paper is to provide a way to determine this eigenvalue by the ratio of spectral form factors for adjacent particle numbers. By extensive large-time numerical computations of the spectral form factor, we can then distinguish between localized and ergodic system features and compute the Thouless time, i.e., the transition time between these regimes in the thermodynamic limit.

Spectral statistics in constrained many-body quantum chaotic systems

We study the spectral statistics of spatially-extended many-body quantum systems with on-site Abelian symmetries or local constraints, focusing primarily on those with conserved dipole and higher moments. In the limit of large local Hilbert space dimension, we find that the spectral form factor $K(t)$ of Floquet random circuits can be mapped exactly to a classical Markov circuit, and, at late times, is related to the partition function of a frustration-free Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) type Hamiltonian. Through this mapping, we show that the inverse of the spectral gap of the RK-Hamiltonian lower bounds the Thouless time $t_{\mathrm{Th}}$ of the underlying circuit. For systems with conserved higher moments, we derive a field theory for the corresponding RK-Hamiltonian by proposing a generalized height field representation for the Hilbert space of the effective spin chain. Using the field theory formulation, we obtain the dispersion of the low-lying excitations of the RK-Hamiltonian in the continuum limit, which allows us to extract $t_{\mathrm{Th}}$. In particular, we analytically argue that in a system of length $L$ that conserves the $m^{th}$ multipole moment, $t_{\mathrm{Th}}$ scales subdiffusively as $L^{2(m+1)}$. We also show that our formalism directly generalizes to higher dimensional circuits, and that in systems that conserve any component of the $m^{th}$ multipole moment, $t_{\mathrm{Th}}$ has the same scaling with the linear size of the system. Our work therefore provides a general approach for studying spectral statistics in constrained many-body chaotic systems.

Spectral Lyapunov exponents in chaotic and localized many-body quantum systems

We consider the spectral statistics of the Floquet operator for disordered, periodically driven spin chains in their quantum chaotic and many-body localized phases (MBL). The spectral statistics are characterized by the traces of powers $t$ of the Floquet operator, and our approach hinges on the fact that, for integer $t$ in systems with local interactions, these traces can be re-expressed in terms of products of dual transfer matrices, each representing a spatial slice of the system. We focus on properties of the dual transfer matrix products as represented by a spectrum of Lyapunov exponents, which we call \textit{spectral Lyapunov exponents}. In particular, we examine the features of this spectrum that distinguish chaotic and MBL phases. The transfer matrices can be block-diagonalized using time-translation symmetry, and so the spectral Lyapunov exponents are classified according to a momentum in the time direction. For large $t$ we argue that the leading Lyapunov exponents in each momentum sector tend to zero in the chaotic phase, while they remain finite in the MBL phase. These conclusions are based on results from three complementary types of calculation. We find exact results for the chaotic phase by considering a Floquet random quantum circuit with on-site Hilbert space dimension $q$ in the large-$q$ limit. In the MBL phase, we show that the spectral Lyapunov exponents remain finite by systematically analyzing models of non-interacting systems, weakly coupled systems, and local integrals of motion. Numerically, we compute the Lyapunov exponents for a Floquet random quantum circuit and for the kicked Ising model in the two phases. As an additional result, we calculate exactly the higher point spectral form factors (hpSFF) in the large-$q$ limit, and show that the generalized Thouless time scales logarithmically in system size for all hpSFF in the large-$q$ chaotic phase.

Chaos and Ergodicity in Extended Quantum Systems with Noisy Driving.

We study the time-evolution operator in a family of local quantum circuits with random fields in a fixed direction. We argue that the presence of quantum chaos implies that at large times the time-evolution operator becomes effectively a random matrix in the many-body Hilbert space. To quantify this phenomenon, we compute analytically the squared magnitude of the trace of the evolution operator-the generalized spectral form factor-and compare it with the prediction of random matrix theory. We show that for the systems under consideration, the generalized spectral form factor can be expressed in terms of dynamical correlation functions of local observables in the infinite temperature state, linking chaotic and ergodic properties of the systems. This also provides a connection between the many-body Thouless time τ_{th}-the time at which the generalized spectral form factor starts following the random matrix theory prediction-and the conservation laws of the system. Moreover, we explain different scalings of τ_{th} with the system size observed for systems with and without the conservation laws.

Spectral properties of three-dimensional Anderson model

The three-dimensional Anderson model represents a paradigmatic model to understand the Anderson localization transition. In this work we first review some key results obtained for this model in the past 50 years, and then study its properties from the perspective of modern numerical approaches. Our main focus is on the quantitative comparison between the level sensitivity statistics and the level statistics. While the former studies the sensitivity of Hamiltonian eigenlevels upon inserting a magnetic flux, the latter studies the properties of unperturbed eigenlevels. We define two versions of dimensionless conductance, the first corresponding to the width of the level curvature distribution relative to the mean level spacing, and the second corresponding to the ratio of the Heisenberg time and the Thouless time obtained from the spectral form factor. We show that both conductances look remarkably similar around the localization transition, in particular, they predict a nearly identical critical point consistent with other well-established measures of the transition. We then study some further properties of those quantities: for level curvatures, we discuss particular similarities and differences between the width of the level curvature distribution and the characteristic energy studied by Edwards and Thouless (1972) in their pioneering work, in which the hopping at one lattice edge is changed from periodic to antiperiodic boundary conditions. In the context of the spectral form factor, we show that at the critical point it enters a broad time-independent regime, in which its value is consistent with the level compressibility obtained from the level variance. Finally, we test the scaling solution of the average level spacing ratio in the crossover regime using the cost function minimization approach introduced recently in Šuntajs et al. (2020). The latter approach seeks for the optimal scaling solution in the vicinity of the crossing point, while at the same time it allows for the crossing point to drift due to finite-size corrections. We find that the extracted transition point and the scaling coefficient agree with those from the literature to high numerical accuracy.

Spectral form factor in the double-scaled SYK model

In this note we study the spectral form factor in the SYK model in large q limit at infinite temperature. We construct analytic solutions for the saddle point equations that describe the slope and the ramp regions of the spectral form factor time dependence. These saddle points are obtained by taking different approaches to the large q limit: the slope region is described by a replica-diagonal solution and the ramp region is described by a replica-nondiagonal solution. We find that the onset of the ramp behavior happens at the Thouless time of order q log q. We also evaluate the one-loop corrections to the slope and ramp solutions for late times, and study the transition from the slope to the ramp. We show this transition is accompanied by the breakdown of the perturbative 1/q expansion, and that the Thouless time is defined by the consistency of extrapolation of this expansion to late times.

Quantum chaos challenges many-body localization.

Characterizing states of matter through the lens of their ergodic properties is a fascinating new direction of research. In the quantum realm, the many-body localization (MBL) was proposed to be the paradigmatic ergodicity breaking phenomenon, which extends the concept of Anderson localization to interacting systems. At the same time, random matrix theory has established a powerful framework for characterizing the onset of quantum chaos and ergodicity (or the absence thereof) in quantum many-body systems. Here we numerically study the spectral statistics of disordered interacting spin chains, which represent prototype models expected to exhibit MBL. We study the ergodicity indicator g=log_{10}(t_{H}/t_{Th}), which is defined through the ratio of two characteristic many-body time scales, the Thouless time t_{Th} and the Heisenberg time t_{H}, and hence resembles the logarithm of the dimensionless conductance introduced in the context of Anderson localization. We argue that the ergodicity breaking transition in interacting spin chains occurs when both time scales are of the same order, t_{Th}≈t_{H}, and g becomes a system-size independent constant. Hence, the ergodicity breaking transition in many-body systems carries certain analogies with the Anderson localization transition. Intriguingly, using a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless correlation length we observe a scaling solution of g across the transition, which allows for detection of the crossing point in finite systems. We discuss the observation that scaled results in finite systems by increasing the system size exhibit a flow towards the quantum chaotic regime.

Random matrix spectral form factor in kicked interacting fermionic chains.

We study quantum chaos and spectral correlations in periodically driven (Floquet) fermionic chains with long-range two-particle interactions, in the presence and absence of particle-number conservation [U(1)] symmetry. We analytically show that the spectral form factor precisely follows the prediction of random matrix theory in the regime of long chains, and for timescales that exceed the so-called Thouless time which scales with the size L as O(L^{2}), or O(L^{0}), in the presence, or absence, of U(1) symmetry, respectively. Using a random phase assumption which essentially requires a long-range nature of the interaction, we demonstrate that the Thouless time scaling is equivalent to the behavior of the spectral gap of a classical Markov chain, which is in the continuous-time (Trotter) limit generated, respectively, by a gapless XXX, or gapped XXZ, spin-1/2 chain Hamiltonian.

Polynomially Filtered Exact Diagonalization Approach to Many-Body Localization

Polynomially filtered exact diagonalization method (POLFED) for large sparse matrices is introduced. The algorithm finds an optimal basis of a subspace spanned by eigenvectors with eigenvalues close to a specified energy target by a spectral transformation using a high order polynomial of the matrix. The memory requirements scale better with system size than in the state-of-the-art shift-invert approach. The potential of POLFED is demonstrated examining many-body localization transition in 1D interacting quantum spin-1/2 chains. We investigate the disorder strength and system size scaling of Thouless time. System size dependence of bipartite entanglement entropy and of the gap ratio highlights the importance of finite-size effects. We discuss possible scenarios regarding the many-body localization transition obtaining estimates for the critical disorder strength.