This is the contribution to Quarks2018 conference proceedings. This contribution is devoted to the holographic description of chaos and quantum complexity in the strongly interacting systems out of equilibrium. In the first part of the talk we present different holographic complexity proposals in out-of-equilibrium CFT following the local perturbation. The second part is devoted to the chaotic growth of the local operator size at a finite chemical potential. There are numerous results stating that the chemical potential may lead to the chaos disappearance, and we confirm these results from holographic viewpoint.
We define a particular combination of charge and heat currents that is decoupled with the heat current. This `heat-decoupled (HD) current can be transported by diffusion at long distances, when some thermo-electric conductivities and susceptibilities satisfy a simple condition. Using the diffusion condition together with the Kelvin formula, we show that the HD diffusivity can be same as the charge diffusivity and also the heat diffusivity. We illustrate that such mechanism is implemented in a strongly coupled field theory, which is dual to a Lifshitz gravity with the dynamical critical index z=2. In particular, it is exhibited that both charge and heat diffusivities build the relationship to the quantum chaos. Moreover, we study the HD diffusivity without imposing the diffusion condition. In some homogeneous holographic lattices, it is found that the diffusivity/chaos relation holds independently of any parameters, including the strength of momentum relaxation, chemical potential, or temperature. We also show a counter example of the relation and discuss its limited universality.
The concept of quantum complexity has far-reaching implications spanning theoretical computer science, quantum many-body physics, and high energy physics. The quantum complexity of a unitary transformation or quantum state is defined as the size of the shortest quantum computation that executes the unitary or prepares the state. It is reasonable to expect that the complexity of a quantum state governed by a chaotic many-body Hamiltonian grows linearly with time for a time that is exponential in the system size; however, because it is hard to rule out a short-cut that improves the efficiency of a computation, it is notoriously difficult to derive lower bounds on quantum complexity for particular unitaries or states without making additional assumptions. To go further, one may study more generic models of complexity growth. We provide a rigorous connection between complexity growth and unitary $k$-designs, ensembles which capture the randomness of the unitary group. This connection allows us to leverage existing results about design growth to draw conclusions about the growth of complexity. We prove that local random quantum circuits generate unitary transformations whose complexity grows linearly for a long time, mirroring the behavior one expects in chaotic quantum systems and verifying conjectures by Brown and Susskind. Moreover, our results apply under a strong definition of quantum complexity based on optimal distinguishing measurements.
Quantum decoherence is the loss of a systems purity due to its interaction with the surrounding environment. Via the AdS/CFT correspondence, we study how a system decoheres when its environment is a strongly-coupled theory. In the Feynman-Vernon formalism, we compute the influence functional holographically by relating it to the generating function of Schwinger-Keldysh propagators and thereby obtain the dynamics of the systems density matrix. We present two exactly solvable examples: (1) a straight string in a BTZ black hole and (2) a scalar probe in AdS$_5$. We prepare an initial state that mimics Schrodingers cat and identify different stages of its decoherence process using the time-scaling behaviors of Renyi entropy. We also relate decoherence to local quantum quenches, and by comparing the time evolution behaviors of the Wigner function and Renyi entropy we demonstrate that the relaxation of local quantum excitations leads to the collapse of its wave-function.
We present the full charge and energy diffusion constants for the Einstein-Maxwell dilaton (EMD) action for Lifshitz spacetime characterized by a dynamical critical exponent $z$. Therein we compute the fully renormalized static thermodynamic potential explicitly, which confirms the forms of all thermodynamic quantities including the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy and Smarr-like relationship. Our exact computation demonstrates a modification to the Lifshitz Ward identity for the EMD theory. For transport, we target our analysis at finite chemical potential and include axion fields to generate momentum dissipation. While our exact results corroborate anticipated bounds, we are able to demonstrate that the diffusivities are governed by the engineering dimension of the diffusion coefficient, $[D]=2-z$. Consequently, a $beta$-function defined as the derivative of the trace of the diffusion matrix with respect to the effective lattice spacing changes sign precisely at $z=2$. At $z=2$, the diffusion equation exhibits perfect scale invariance and the corresponding diffusion constant is the pure number $1/d_s$ for both the charge and energy sectors, where $d_s$ is the number of spatial dimensions. Further, we find that as $ztoinfty$, the charge diffusion constant vanishes, indicating charge localization. Deviation from universal decoupled transport obtains when either the chemical potential or momentum dissipation are large relative to temperature, an echo of strong thermoelectric interactions.
We calculate the thermal diffusion constant $D_T$ and butterfly velocity $v_B$ in neutral magnetized plasma using holographic magnetic brane background. We find the thermal diffusion constant satisfies Blakes bound. The constant in the bound $D_T2pi T/v_B^2$ is a decreasing function of magnetic field. It approaches one half in the large magnetic field limit. We also find the existence of a special point defined by Lyapunov exponent and butterfly velocity on which pole-skipping phenomenon occurs.