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Many-body quantum dynamics slows down at low density
by Xiao Chen, Yingfei Gu, Andrew Lucas
This Submission thread is now published as
Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Andrew Lucas |
| Submission information | |
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| Preprint Link: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.10352v3 (pdf) |
| Date accepted: | 2020-11-10 |
| Date submitted: | 2020-10-15 02:47 |
| Submitted by: | Lucas, Andrew |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics |
| Ontological classification | |
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| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
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| Approach: | Theoretical |
Abstract
We study quantum many-body systems with a global U(1) conservation law, focusing on a theory of $N$ interacting fermions with charge conservation, or $N$ interacting spins with one conserved component of total spin. We define an effective operator size at finite chemical potential through suitably regularized out-of-time-ordered correlation functions. The growth rate of this density-dependent operator size vanishes algebraically with charge density; hence we obtain new bounds on Lyapunov exponents and butterfly velocities in charged systems at a given density, which are parametrically stronger than any Lieb-Robinson bound. We argue that the density dependence of our bound on the Lyapunov exponent is saturated in the charged Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. We also study random automaton quantum circuits and Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models, each of which exhibit a different density dependence for the Lyapunov exponent, and explain the discrepancy. We propose that our results are a cartoon for understanding Planckian-limited energy-conserving dynamics at finite temperature.
Author comments upon resubmission
We thank you for the very positive reports. We have made the minor requested changes to our manuscript and believe it is now ready for publication.
Sincerely,
Xiao, Yingfei, Andy
List of changes
Response to the first referee:
We have fixed the typos that were pointed out, and modified the discussion above (1.4) to clarify what we meant by finite density at infinite T as an “analogue” of finite T: both correspond to dynamics in a very small part of Hilbert space.
Response to the second referee:
We added a new paragraph to the introduction (containing equations (1.6) and (1.7)) which explains why (1.5) is a universal bound at finite density.
Another tiny change:
In our discussion of the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism, we changed "world index" to "contour index" since the latter appears more customary in the literature.
Published as SciPost Phys. 9, 071 (2020)