Entanglement spreading and emergent locality in Brownian SYK chains

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Narde, Jatin, Parrikar, Onkar, Rajgadia, Harshit, Trivedi, Sandip
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866915974607798272
author Narde, Jatin
Parrikar, Onkar
Rajgadia, Harshit
Trivedi, Sandip
author_facet Narde, Jatin
Parrikar, Onkar
Rajgadia, Harshit
Trivedi, Sandip
contents The Ryu-Takayanagi (RT) formula and its interpretation in terms of quantum error correction (QEC) implies an emergent locality for the spread of quantum information in holographic CFTs, where information injected at a point in the boundary theory spreads within a sharp light-cone corresponding to the butterfly velocity. This emergent locality is a necessary condition for the existence of a geometric bulk dual with an RT-like formula for entanglement entropy. In this paper, we use tools from QEC to study the spread of quantum information and the emergence of a sharp light-cone in an analytically tractable model of chaotic dynamics, namely a one-dimensional Brownian SYK chain. We start with an infinite temperature state in this model and inject a qudit at time $t=0$ at some point $p$ on the chain. We then explicitly calculate the amount of information of the qudit contained in an interval of length $2\ell$ (centered around $p$) at some later time $t=T$. We find that at strong coupling, this quantity shows a sharp transition as a function of $\ell$ from near zero to near maximal correlation. The transition occurs at $\ell \sim v_B T$, with $v_B$ being the butterfly velocity. Underlying the emergence of this sharp light-cone is a non-linear generalization of the diffusion equation called the FKPP equation, which admits sharp domain wall solutions at late times and strong coupling. These domain wall solutions can be understood on physical grounds from properties of operator growth in chaotic systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_00060
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Entanglement spreading and emergent locality in Brownian SYK chains
Narde, Jatin
Parrikar, Onkar
Rajgadia, Harshit
Trivedi, Sandip
High Energy Physics - Theory
Strongly Correlated Electrons
The Ryu-Takayanagi (RT) formula and its interpretation in terms of quantum error correction (QEC) implies an emergent locality for the spread of quantum information in holographic CFTs, where information injected at a point in the boundary theory spreads within a sharp light-cone corresponding to the butterfly velocity. This emergent locality is a necessary condition for the existence of a geometric bulk dual with an RT-like formula for entanglement entropy. In this paper, we use tools from QEC to study the spread of quantum information and the emergence of a sharp light-cone in an analytically tractable model of chaotic dynamics, namely a one-dimensional Brownian SYK chain. We start with an infinite temperature state in this model and inject a qudit at time $t=0$ at some point $p$ on the chain. We then explicitly calculate the amount of information of the qudit contained in an interval of length $2\ell$ (centered around $p$) at some later time $t=T$. We find that at strong coupling, this quantity shows a sharp transition as a function of $\ell$ from near zero to near maximal correlation. The transition occurs at $\ell \sim v_B T$, with $v_B$ being the butterfly velocity. Underlying the emergence of this sharp light-cone is a non-linear generalization of the diffusion equation called the FKPP equation, which admits sharp domain wall solutions at late times and strong coupling. These domain wall solutions can be understood on physical grounds from properties of operator growth in chaotic systems.
title Entanglement spreading and emergent locality in Brownian SYK chains
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
Strongly Correlated Electrons
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00060