Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In the context of anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory , gravitational shockwaves serve as a geometric manifestation of boundary quantum chaos. We study this connection in general diffeomorphism-invariant theories involving an arbitrary number of bosonic fields. Specifically, we demonstrate that theories containing spin-2 or higher-spin fields generally admit classical localized shockwave solutions on black hole backgrounds, whereas spin-0 and spin-1 theories do not. As in the gravitational case, these higher-spin shockwaves provide a means to compute the out-of-time-order correlator. Both the Lyapunov exponent and the butterfly velocity are found to universally agree with predictions from pole skipping. In particular, higher-spin fields lead to a Lyapunov exponent that violates the chaos bound and a butterfly velocity that may exceed the speed of light.
DOI: 10.1103/fpbn-pkyh
Authors: Diandian Wang, Zi-Yue Wang
Institution: Harvard University
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Award: Topics In General Relativity
OpenAlex ID: W4414091888