Chaos and Randomness in Strongly-Interacting Quantum Systems

Citation

Hunter-Jones, Nicholas R. (2018) Chaos and Randomness in Strongly-Interacting Quantum Systems. Dissertation (Ph.D.), California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/BHZ5-HV76. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:06012018-143029746

Abstract

Quantum chaos entails an entropic and computational obstruction to describing a system and thus is intrinsically difficult to characterize. An understanding of quantum chaos is fundamentally related to the mechanism of thermalization in many-body systems and the quantum nature of black holes. In this thesis we adopt the view that quantum information theory provides a powerful framework in which to elucidate chaos in strongly-interacting quantum systems.

We first push towards a more precise understanding of chaotic dynamics by relating different diagnostics of chaos, studying the time-evolution of random matrix Hamiltonians, and quantifying random matrix behavior in physical systems. We derive relations between out-of-time ordered correlation functions, spectral quantities, and frame potentials to relate the scrambling of quantum information, decay of correlators, and Haar-randomness. We give analytic expressions for these quantities in random matrix theory to explore universal aspects of late-time dynamics. Motivated by our random matrix results, we define k-invariance in order to capture the onset of random matrix behavior in physical systems.

We then refine our diagnostics in order to study chaotic systems with symmetry by considering Haar-randomness with respect to quotients of the unitary group, and in doing so we generalize our quantum information machinery. We further consider extended random matrix ensembles in the context of strongly-interacting quantum systems dual to black holes. Lastly, we study operator growth in classes of random quantum circuits.

Thesis Files