Work

Critical quenches, OTOCs and early-time chaos

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: In this article, we explore dynamical aspects of Out-of-Time-Order correlators (OTOCs) for critical quenches, in which an initial non-trivial state evolves with a CFT-Hamiltonian. At sufficiently large time, global critical quenches exhibit a universal thermal-behavior in terms of low-point correlators. We demonstrate that, under such a quench, OTOCs demarcate chaotic CFTs from integrable CFTs by exhibiting a characteristic exponential Lyapunov growth for the former. Upon perturbatively introducing inhomogeneity to the global quench, we further argue and demonstrate with examples that, such a perturbation parameter can induce a parametrically large scrambling time, even for a CFT with an order one central charge. This feature may be relevant in designing measurement protocols for non-trivial OTOCs, in general. Both our global and inhomogeneous quench results bode well for an upper bound on the corresponding Lyapunov exponent, that may hold outside thermal equilibrium.

Source: Journal of High Energy Physics

DOI: 10.1007/jhep07(2022)046

Authors: Suchetan Das, Bobby Ezhuthachan, Arnab Kundu, Somnath Porey, Baishali Roy

Institutions: Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Homi Bhabha National Institute

Language: English

Topic: Black Holes and Theoretical Physics

Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funder: Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research

OpenAlex ID: W3198035061