arXiv subjects

Johanna Erdmenger

Publications and source records attributed to Johanna Erdmenger.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Wormhole-induced effective coupling in SYK chains

Inhomogeneous quantum chains have recently been considered in the context of developing novel discrete realizations of holographic dualities. To advance this programme, we explore the ground states of infinite chains with large number $N$ of Majorana fermions on each site, which interact via on-site $q$-body Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) couplings, as well as via additional inhomogeneous hopping terms between nearest-neighbour sites. The hopping parameters are either aperiodically or randomly distributed. Our approach unifies techniques to solve SYK-like models in the large $N$ limit with a real-space renormalization group method known as strong-disorder renormalization group (SDRG). We show that the SDRG decimation of SYK dots linked by a strong hopping induces an effective hopping interaction between their neighbouring sites. If two decimated sites are nearest neighbours, in the large $q$ limit their local ground states admit a holographic dual description in terms of eternal traversable wormholes. At the end of the SDRG procedure, we obtain a factorised ground state of the infinite inhomogeneous SYK chains that we consider, which has a spacetime description involving a sequence of wormholes. This amounts to a local near-boundary description of the bulk geometry in the context of discrete holography.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Opening the Black Box: predicting the trainability of deep neural networks with reconstruction entropy

An important challenge in machine learning is to predict the initial conditions under which a given neural network will be trainable. We present a method for predicting the trainable regime in parameter space for deep feedforward neural networks (DNNs) based on reconstructing the input from subsequent activation layers via a cascade of single-layer auxiliary networks. We show that a single epoch of training of the shallow cascade networks is sufficient to predict the trainability of the deep feedforward network on a range of datasets (MNIST, CIFAR10, FashionMNIST, and white noise), thereby providing a significant reduction in overall training time. We achieve this by computing the relative entropy between reconstructed images and the original inputs, and show that this probe of information loss is sensitive to the phase behaviour of the network. We further demonstrate that this method generalizes to residual neural networks (ResNets) and convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Moreover, our method illustrates the network's decision making process by displaying the changes performed on the input data at each layer, which we demonstrate for both a DNN trained on MNIST and the vgg16 CNN trained on the ImageNet dataset. Our results provide a technique for significantly accelerating the training of large neural networks.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Spread complexity for the planar limit of holography

Complexity is a fundamental characteristic of states within a quantum system. Its use is however mostly limited to bosonic systems, inhibiting its present applicability to supersymmetric theories. This is also relevant to its application to the AdS/CFT correspondence. To address this limitation, we extend the framework of spread complexity beyond bosonic systems to include fermionic and supercoherent states. This offers a gateway to compute spread complexity analytically for any semiclassical system governed by a Hamiltonian associated with a Lie (super)algebra. This requires extending the Krylov chain to a Krylov path in a higher-dimensional lattice. A detailed analysis of supercoherent states within the super Heisenberg-Weyl and OSp$(2|1)$ algebras elucidates distinct contributions from bosonic and fermionic degrees of freedom to the complexity. This generalisation allows us to access the semiclassical regime of the planar limit of the holographic correspondence. We then compute the spread complexity of large charge superstring states on the gravity side, which are equivalent to the dual gauge states. The resulting complexity leads to Krylov paths capturing the geometry in which the string propagates.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Non-Locality induces Isometry and Factorisation in Holography

In holography, two manifestations of the black hole information paradox are given by the non-isometric nature of the bulk-boundary map and by the factorisation puzzle. By considering time-shifted microstates of the eternal black hole, we demonstrate that both these puzzles may be simultaneously resolved by taking into account non-local quantum corrections that correspond to wormholes arising from state averaging. This is achieved by showing, using a resolvent technique, that the resulting Hilbert space for an eternal black hole in Anti-de Sitter space is finite-dimensional with a discrete energy spectrum. The latter gives rise to a transition to a type I von Neumann algebra.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

The chiral torsional anomaly and the Nieh-Yan invariant with and without boundaries

There exists a long-standing debate regarding the torsion contribution to the 4d chiral anomaly of a Dirac fermion. Central to this debate is the Nieh-Yan anomaly, which has been considered ill-defined and a regularization artifact. Using a heat-kernel approach, we examine the relationship between the Dirac operator index, the Nieh-Yan invariant and the torsional anomaly. We show the Nieh-Yan invariant vanishes on spacetimes without boundaries, if the Dirac index is well-defined. In the known examples of non-vanishing Nieh--Yan invariant on manifolds without boundaries, the heat kernel expansion breaks down, making the index ill-defined. Finally, for finite boundaries we identify several finite bulk and boundary anomaly terms, alongside bulk and boundary Nieh-Yan terms. We construct explicit counterterms that cancel the Nieh-Yan terms and argue that the boundary terms give rise to a torsional anomalous Hall effect. Our results emphasize the importance of renormalization conditions, as these can affect the non-thermal Nieh-Yan anomaly coefficients. In addition, we demonstrate that anomalous torsional transport may arise even without relying on the Nieh-Yan invariant.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Gibbons-Hawking-York boundary terms and the generalized geometrical trinity of gravity

General relativity (GR) as described in terms of curvature by the Einstein-Hilbert action is dynamically equivalent to theories of gravity formulated in terms of spacetime torsion or non-metricity. This forms what is called the geometrical trinity of gravity. The theories corresponding to this trinity are, apart from GR, the teleparallel (TEGR) and symmetric teleparallel (STEGR) equivalent theories of general relativity, respectively, and their actions are equivalent to GR up to boundary terms $B$. We investigate how the Gibbons-Hawking-York (GHY) boundary term of GR changes under the transition to TEGR and STEGR within the framework of metric-affine gravity. We show that $B$ is the difference between the GHY term of GR and that of metric-affine gravity. Moreover, we show that the GHY term for both TEGR and STEGR must vanish for consistency of the variational problem. Furthermore, our approach allows to extend the equivalence between GR, TEGR and STEGR beyond the Einstein-Hilbert action to any action built out of the curvature two-form, thus establishing the generalized geometrical trinity of gravity. We argue that these results will be particularly useful in view of studying gauge/gravity duality for theories with torsion and non-metricity.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Simulating Holographic Conformal Field Theories on Hyperbolic Lattices

We demonstrate how table-top settings combining hyperbolic lattices with nonlinear dynamics universally encode aspects of the bulk-boundary-correspondence between gravity in anti-de-Sitter (AdS) space and conformal field theory (CFT). Our concrete and broadly applicable holographic toy model simulates gravitational self-interactions in the bulk and features an emergent CFT with nontrivial correlations on the boundary. We measure the CFT data contained in the two- and three-point functions and clarify how a thermal CFT is simulated through an effective black hole geometry. As a concrete example, we propose and simulate an experimentally feasible protocol to measure the holographic CFT using electrical circuits.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Chaos and integrability in triangular billiards

We characterize quantum dynamics in triangular billiards in terms of five properties: (1) the level spacing ratio (LSR), (2) spectral complexity (SC), (3) Lanczos coefficient variance, (4) energy eigenstate localisation in the Krylov basis, and (5) dynamical growth of spread complexity. The billiards we study are classified as integrable, pseudointegrable or non-integrable, depending on their internal angles which determine properties of classical trajectories and associated quantum spectral statistics. A consistent picture emerges when transitioning from integrable to non-integrable triangles: (1) LSRs increase; (2) spectral complexity growth slows down; (3) Lanczos coefficient variances decrease; (4) energy eigenstates delocalize in the Krylov basis; and (5) spread complexity increases, displaying a peak prior to a plateau instead of recurrences. Pseudo-integrable triangles deviate by a small amount in these charactertistics from non-integrable ones, which in turn approximate models from the Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble (GOE). Isosceles pseudointegrable and non-integrable triangles have independent sectors that are symmetric and antisymmetric under a reflection symmetry. These sectors separately reproduce characteristics of the GOE, even though the combined system approximates characteristics expected from integrable theories with Poisson distributed spectra.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Discrete JT gravity as an Ising model

Inspired by the program of discrete holography, we show that Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity on a hyperbolic tiling of Euclidean AdS$_2$ gives rise to an Ising model on the dual lattice, subject to a topological constraint. The Ising model involves an asymptotic boundary condition with spins pointing opposite to the magnetic field. The topological constraint enforces a single domain wall between the spins of opposite direction, with the topology of a circle. The resolvent of JT gravity is related to the free energy of this Ising model, and the classical limit of JT gravity corresponds to the Ising low-temperature limit. We study this Ising model through a Monte Carlo approach and a mean-field approximation. For finite truncations of the infinite hyperbolic lattice, the map between both theories is only valid in a regime in which the domain wall has a finite size. For the extremal cases of large positive or negative coupling, the domain wall either shrinks to zero or touches the boundary of the lattice. This behavior is confirmed by the mean-field analysis. We expect that our results may be used as a starting point for establishing a holographic matrix model duality for discretized gravity.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Spread complexity and localization in $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric systems

We present a framework for investigating wave function spreading in $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric quantum systems using spread complexity and spread entropy. We consider a tight-binding chain with complex on-site potentials at the boundary sites. In the $\mathcal{PT}$-unbroken phase, the wave function is delocalized. We find that in the $\mathcal{PT}$-broken phase, it becomes localized on one edge of the tight-binding lattice. This localization is a realization of the non-Hermitian skin effect. Localization in the $\mathcal{PT}$-broken phase is observed both in the lattice chain basis and the Krylov basis. Spread entropy, entropic complexity, and a further measure that we term the Krylov inverse participation ratio probe the dynamics of wave function spreading and quantify the strength of localization probed in the Krylov basis. The number of Krylov basis vectors required to store the information of the state reduces with the strength of localization. Our results demonstrate how measures in Krylov space can be used to characterize the non-hermitian skin effect and its localization phase transition.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Holography for Sp(2$N_c$) Gauge Dynamics: from Composite Higgs to Technicolour

We study Sp(2$N_c$) gauge dynamics with two Dirac fermion flavours in the fundamental representation. These strongly coupled systems underlie some composite Higgs models with a global symmetry breaking pattern SU(4)$\rightarrow$Sp(4), leading to a light quartet of pseudo-Goldstone bosons that can play the role of the Higgs. Including four-fermion interactions can rotate the vacuum to a technicolour breaking pattern. Using gauge/gravity duality, we study the underlying gauge dynamics. Our model incorporates the $N_c$-specific running of the fermion anomalous dimension and can thus distinguish between specific gauge groups. We determine the bound-state spectrum of the UV SU(4)$\rightarrow$Sp(4) symmetry breaking model, also including fermion masses and mass splitting, and display the $N_c$ dependence. The inclusion of a four-fermion interaction shows the emergence of three Goldstone bosons on the path to technicolour dynamics.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2024

Spread complexity for measurement-induced non-unitary dynamics and Zeno effect

Using spread complexity and spread entropy, we study non-unitary quantum dynamics. For non-hermitian Hamiltonians, we extend the bi-Lanczos construction for the Krylov basis to the Schrödinger picture. Moreover, we implement an algorithm adapted to complex symmetric Hamiltonians. This reduces the computational memory requirements by half compared to the bi-Lanczos construction. We apply this construction to the one-dimensional tight-binding Hamiltonian subject to repeated measurements at fixed small time intervals, resulting in effective non-unitary dynamics. We find that the spread complexity initially grows with time, followed by an extended decay period and saturation. The choice of initial state determines the saturation value of complexity and entropy. In analogy to measurement-induced phase transitions, we consider a quench between hermitian and non-hermitian Hamiltonian evolution induced by turning on regular measurements at different frequencies. We find that as a function of the measurement frequency, the time at which the spread complexity starts growing increases. This time asymptotes to infinity when the time gap between measurements is taken to zero, indicating the onset of the quantum Zeno effect, according to which measurements impede time evolution.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Entanglement in interacting Majorana chains and transitions of von Neumann algebras

We consider Majorana lattices with two-site interactions consisting of a general function of the fermion bilinear. The models are exactly solvable in the limit of a large number of on-site fermions. The four-site chain exhibits a quantum phase transition controlled by the hopping parameters and manifests itself in a discontinuous entanglement entropy, obtained by constraining the one-sided modular Hamiltonian. Inspired by recent work within the AdS/CFT correspondence, we identify transitions between types of von Neumann operator algebras throughout the phase diagram. We find transitions of the form II$_1\leftrightarrow\,$III$\,\,\leftrightarrow\,\,$I$_\infty$ that reduce to II$_1\leftrightarrow\,\,$I$_\infty$ in the strongly interacting limit, where they connect non-factorized and factorized ground states. Our results provide novel realizations of such transitions in a controlled many-body model.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Geometric Phases Characterise Operator Algebras and Missing Information

We show how geometric phases may be used to fully describe quantum systems, with or without gravity, by providing knowledge about the geometry and topology of its Hilbert space. We find a direct relation between geometric phases and von Neumann algebras. In particular, we show that a vanishing geometric phase implies the existence of a well-defined trace functional on the algebra. We discuss how this is realised within the AdS/CFT correspondence for the eternal black hole. On the other hand, a non-vanishing geometric phase indicates missing information for a local observer, associated to reference frames covering only parts of the quantum system considered. We illustrate this with several examples, ranging from a single spin in a magnetic field to Virasoro Berry phases and the geometric phase associated to the eternal black hole in AdS spacetime. For the latter, a non-vanishing geometric phase is tied to the presence of a centre in the associated von Neumann algebra.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Universal chaotic dynamics from Krylov space

Krylov complexity measures the spread of the wavefunction in the Krylov basis, which is constructed using the Hamiltonian and an initial state. We investigate the evolution of the maximally entangled state in the Krylov basis for both chaotic and non-chaotic systems. For this purpose, we derive an Ehrenfest theorem for the Krylov complexity, which reveals its close relation to the spectrum. Our findings suggest that neither the linear growth nor the saturation of Krylov complexity is necessarily associated with chaos. However, for chaotic systems, we observe a universal rise-slope-ramp-plateau behavior in the transition probability from the initial state to one of the Krylov basis states. Moreover, a long ramp in the transition probability is a signal for spectral rigidity, characterizing quantum chaos. Also, this ramp is directly responsible for the late-time peak of Krylov complexity observed in the literature. On the other hand, for non-chaotic systems, this long ramp is absent. Therefore, our results help to clarify which features of the wave function time evolution in Krylov space characterize chaos. We exemplify this by considering the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model with two-body or four-body interactions.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Aperiodic spin chains at the boundary of hyperbolic tilings

In view of making progress towards establishing a holographic duality for theories defined on a discrete tiling of the hyperbolic plane, we consider a recently proposed boundary spin chain Hamiltonian with aperiodic couplings that are chosen such as to reflect the inflation rule, i.e. the construction principle, of the bulk tiling. As a remnant of conformal symmetry, the spin degrees of freedom are arranged in multiplets of the dihedral group under which the bulk lattice is invariant. For the boundary Hamiltonian, we use strong-disorder RG techniques and evaluate correlation functions, the entanglement entropy and mutual information for the case that the ground state is in an aperiodic singlet phase. We find that two-point functions decay as a power-law with exponent equal to one. Furthermore, we consider the case that the spin variables transform in the fundamental representation of $SO(N)$, leading to a gapless system, and find that the effective central charge obtained from the entanglement entropy scales as $\ln N$, reflecting the number of local degrees of freedom. We also determine the dependence of this central charge on the parameters specifying the bulk tiling. Moreover, we obtain an analytical expression for the mutual information, according to which there is no phase transition at any finite value of the distance between the two intervals involved.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Symmetry-resolved modular correlation functions in free fermionic theories

As a new ingredient for analyzing the fine structure of entanglement, we study the symmetry resolution of the modular flow of $U(1)$-invariant operators in theories endowed with a global $U(1)$ symmetry. We provide a consistent definition of symmetry-resolved modular flow that is defined for a local algebra of operators associated to a sector with fixed charge. We also discuss the symmetry-resolved modular correlation functions and show that they satisfy the KMS condition in each symmetry sector. Our analysis relies on the factorization of the Hilbert space associated to spatial subsystems. We provide a toolkit for computing the symmetry-resolved modular correlation function of the charge density operator in free fermionic theories. As an application, we compute this correlation function for a $1+1$-dimensional free massless Dirac field theory and find that it is independent of the charge sector at leading order in the ultraviolet cutoff expansion. This feature can be regarded as a charge equipartition of the modular correlation function. Although obtained for free fermions, these results may be of potential interest for bulk reconstruction in AdS/CFT.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Holographic Non-Abelian Flavour Symmetry Breaking

We investigate a holographic model for both spontaneous and explicit symmetry breaking of non-abelian flavour symmetries. This consists of a bottom-up model inspired by the top-down D3/D7 probe brane model that incorporates the running anomalous dimensions of the fields. We ensure that in the holographic bulk, the full non-abelian flavour symmetries for massless quarks are present. The quark masses are spontaneously generated field values in the bulk and there is a resultant bulk Higgs mechanism. We provide a numerical technique to find the mass eigenvalues for a system of coupled holographic fields. We test this approach using an analytic model of ${\cal N}=2$ supersymmetric matter. We apply this approach to two-flavour QCD with both $u-d$ quark mass splitting and multi-trace bulk action terms that are expected to break $U(N_f)_V$ to $SU(N_f)_V \times U(1)_V$ away from large $N_c$. We also discuss three-flavour QCD with strange quark mass splitting and applications to more exotic symmetry breaking patterns of potential relevance for composite Higgs models.

hep-th↗