arXiv subjects

Michal P. Heller

Publications and source records attributed to Michal P. Heller.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Hydrodynamic attractors

Attractors are effective low-dimensional structures, defined in a chosen set of observables, that trajectories from different initial states approach; hydrodynamic attractors are those on which the late-time evolution is governed by hydrodynamic constitutive relations. Motivated by nuclear collisions and ultracold atomic gases, this chapter distinguishes attractorization (the loss of sensitivity to some directions in the space of initial states) from hydrodynamization (the onset of validity of hydrodynamic constitutive relations). Using mainly conformal, boost-invariant Bjorken flow, we compare Müller-Israel-Stewart-type theories, kinetic theory, holography, and classical Yang-Mills fields. Forward attraction, produced by the decay of non-hydrodynamic modes, is distinguished from pullback attraction, which can select a unique regular solution, and from expansion-driven attraction, which can suppress initial-state sensitivity before microscopic relaxation, with or without a subsequent fluid regime. Divergent gradient expansions and their transseries completions, the state-space picture, and adiabatic hydrodynamization provide complementary descriptions. Applications to nuclear collisions include particle production, transverse energy and flow, the initialization of and linear response around attracting backgrounds, jet quenching, and attractor-informed modifications of hydrodynamic models. For ultracold Fermi gases, we review theoretical proposals for bulk-channel attractors under scattering-length drives and distinguish them from recent measurements of short-time contact and momentum-distribution dynamics.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2026

Adiabatic hydrodynamization and quasinormal modes of nonthermal attractors

Nonthermal attractors govern the emergent self-similar dynamics of far-from-equilibrium quantum systems, from ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions to cold-atom experiments. Within the framework of adiabatic hydrodynamization, the approach to a nonthermal attractor is described by the decay of excited states of an effective Hamiltonian. Using an exactly solvable kinetic theory -- the longitudinally expanding, overoccupied gluon plasma dominated by small-angle elastic scattering -- we establish a direct correspondence between the eigenmodes of adiabatic hydrodynamization and the quasinormal mode spectrum of the nonthermal attractor. This equivalence suggests a general framework for identifying universal dynamical structures in nonequilibrium systems. As a byproduct, we derive analytic prescaling solutions for strongly longitudinally expanding systems.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2026

The quadratic growth of Krylov spread complexity in the BTZ black hole

The boundary quantity that captures the growth of black-hole interiors quantified by holographic complexity remains unknown beyond 2d dilaton gravity. We provide a critical analysis of a partition-function construction of Krylov spread complexity for thermofield-double states that provides a dimension-independent boundary reconstruction from semiclassical holographic partition functions, while developing the present dynamical and bulk construction for the BTZ saddle. In the double-scaled Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, where exact and semiclassical results can be compared, we show that the classical limit is reliable only when taken after the complexity has been reconstructed; taking this limit at the level of individual Lanczos coefficients discards essential information. Applying the construction to a large-central-charge two-dimensional conformal field theory above the Hawking-Page temperature dual to a Bañados-Teitelboim-Zanelli black hole, we find an intermediate departure from early-time quadratic growth followed by behavior compatible with a return toward asymptotically quadratic growth, rather than the linear late-time behavior of the volume and the standard finite-functional complexity = anything class. We then match this boundary behavior to a generalized complexity = anything bulk object built from an infinite series of extrinsic-curvature invariants. The construction provides a systematic route from black-hole thermodynamics to Krylov dynamics and can naturally be extended to higher-dimensional holographic black holes.

hep-th↗

arXiv2026

Experimentally accessible drive-induced attractor in a Fermi gas near unitarity

Hydrodynamic attractors describe loss of sensitivity to initial conditions. Their earliest, expansion-driven stage is distinct from the later relaxation-driven mechanism and central to the theoretical paradigm but hard to access in heavy-ion collision experiments. We show within a coupled energy-bulk-pressure model that a near-unitary Fermi gas driven by a rapid scattering-length sweep loses sensitivity to one state-space direction before bulk relaxation sets in -- visible only in the joint state space, not as a universal single-variable curve. We outline an experimental $^{40}$K protocol based on time-resolved contact measurements and a varied-ramp comparison.

hep-th↗

arXiv2026

Temporal Entanglement from Twist Correlators in 2d Conformal Field Theory and Holography

We formulate timelike entanglement entropy and its Rényi extension in two-dimensional conformal field theory through the analytic continuation of replica twist correlators to time-ordered, timelike-separated insertions. This field-theoretic construction grounds and generalizes recent developments, and applies to temporal subregions of arbitrary extent. Within three-dimensional holography, the semiclassical boundary correlator identifies boundary-anchored complex geodesics as the relevant bulk saddles and selects the one with the smallest real part of the length. This provides a direct boundary derivation of the proposed complex extremal surface prescription and extends to Rényi index $n>1$, for which we explicitly construct the corresponding complex cosmic brane geometry in the vacuum. We develop these ideas in several representative settings, including locally and globally excited states and quantum operator quenches, making manifest the precise agreement between boundary twist correlator and bulk complex geodesic calculations. For AdS-Vaidya, our approach predicts a different result from earlier piecewise geodesic constructions, while reproducing the field theory answer. Across these examples, the operator ordering uniquely determines the imaginary part of the complex-valued entropy, which is quantized in units of $cπ/6$ and sensitive to the effective causal structure but not to the underlying dynamics.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Quantum complexity in gravity, quantum field theory, and quantum information science

Quantum complexity quantifies the difficulty of preparing a state or implementing a unitary transformation with limited resources. Applications range from quantum computation to condensed matter physics and quantum gravity. We seek to bridge the approaches of these fields, which define and study complexity using different frameworks and tools. We describe several definitions of complexity, along with their key properties. In quantum information theory, we focus on complexity growth in random quantum circuits. In quantum many-body systems and quantum field theory (QFT), we discuss a geometric definition of complexity in terms of geodesics on the unitary group. In dynamical systems, we explore a definition of complexity in terms of state or operator spreading, as well as concepts from tensor-networks. We also outline applications to simple quantum systems, quantum many-body models, and QFTs including conformal field theories (CFTs). Finally, we explain the proposed relationship between complexity and gravitational observables within the holographic anti-de Sitter (AdS)/CFT correspondence.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Building far-from-equilibrium effective field theories using shift symmetries

Contemporary understanding of thermalization in quantum field theory stems largely from understanding properties of transient excitations of equilibria. These nonhydrodynamic excitations are known to structurally differ between weakly- and strongly-coupled quantum field theories with no known results at intermediate values of the interaction strength. We demonstrate that all the known behaviors of transient excitations can be understood as a consequence of different realizations of a symmetry principle, the shift symmetry, applied at the level of the far from equilibrium generalization of the hydrodynamic effective action that we explicitly construct. Our approach naturally includes the effects of stochastic fluctuations outside the hydrodynamic regime and allows to explicitly construct hybrid models interpolating between weak- and strong-coupling behavior. We study properties of one such model motivated by thermalization in nuclear collisions in light of the QCD running coupling.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Stable evolution of relativistic hydrodynamics order-by-order in gradients

We provide a systematic framework for solving the initial value problem for relativistic hydrodynamics formulated as a gradient expansion. Secular growth is handled by a suitable covariant resummation scheme, which reorganises the degrees of freedom at each order in the expansion while preserving the sum. Our scheme can be applied to any order in the gradient expansion; we provide the explicit formulation at first and second orders. When working to first order, we find that the BDNK equations of motion emerge as an intermediate step in a calculation performed in the Landau frame. We show that non-hydrodynamic modes appear only in such intermediate calculations and cancel when evaluating solutions to the required order. Our procedure does not introduce any other fields or require any additional initial data beyond those appearing in the theory of ideal fluids.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

De Sitter holographic complexity from Krylov complexity in DSSYK

We utilize the recent connection between the high energy limit of the double-scaled SYK model and two-dimensional de Sitter solutions of sine dilaton gravity to identify the length of a family of geodesics spanned between future and past infinities with Krylov spread complexity. This constitutes an explicit top-down microscopic realization of holographic complexity in a cosmological spacetime. Our identification is different from the existing holographic complexity proposals for de Sitter geometries which are anchored either on horizons as holographic screens or on timelike observers. This leads us to introduce and investigate a new cosmological holographic complexity proposal in any dimension. It is based on extremal timelike volumes anchored at the asymptotic past and future and at large values of the anchoring boundary coordinate grows linearly with growth rate proportional to the product of de Sitter entropy and temperature.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Krylov spread complexity as holographic complexity beyond JT gravity

One of the important open problems in quantum black hole physics is a dual interpretation of holographic complexity proposals. To date the only quantitative match is the equality between the Krylov spread complexity in triple-scaled SYK at infinite temperature and the complexity = volume proposal in classical JT gravity. Our work utilizes the recent connection between double-scaled SYK and sine-dilaton gravity to show that the quantitative relation between Krylov spread complexity and complexity = volume extends to finite temperatures and to full quantum regime on the gravity side at disk level. From the latter we isolate the first quantum correction to the complexity = volume proposal and propose to view it as a complexity of quantum fields in the bulk. Finally, we comment on the switchback effect, whose presence would make the Krylov spread complexity a fully fledged holographic complexity at least in sine-dilaton gravity.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Temporal Entanglement from Holographic Entanglement Entropy

Recently, several notions of entanglement in time have emerged as a novel frontier in quantum many-body physics, quantum field theory and gravity. We propose a systematic prescription to characterize temporal entanglement in relativistic quantum field theory in a general state for an arbitrary subregion on a flat, constant-time slice in a flat spacetime. Our prescriptions starts with the standard entanglement entropy of a spatial subregion and amounts to transporting the unchanged subregion to boosted time slices all the way across the light cone when it becomes in general a complex characterization of the corresponding temporal subregion. For holographic quantum field theories, our prescription amounts to an analytic continuation of all codimension-two bulk extremal surfaces satisfying the homology constraint and picking the one with the smallest real value of the area as the leading saddle point. We implement this prescription for holographic conformal field theories in thermal states on both a two-dimensional Lorentzian cylinder and three-dimensional Minkowski space, and show that it leads to results with self-consistent physical properties of temporal entanglement.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Far from equilibrium hydrodynamics of nonthermal fixed points

Nonthermal fixed points are paradigmatic far-from-equilibrium phenomena of relevance to high-energy physics, cosmology, and cold atomic gases. We propose that, despite their intrinsically nonequilibrium nature, nonthermal fixed points give rise to hydrodynamic excitations otherwise known in the vicinity of thermal equilibrium. As a result, nonthermal fixed points can also be characterized by transport coefficients, such as a far-from-equilibrium, and therefore manifestly time-dependent, incarnation of shear viscosity. We corroborate our proposal with explicit studies using relativistic kinetic theory with binary collisions of massless particles in the 14-moment approximation and comparisons to QCD kinetic theory simulations.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Geometric Interpretation of Timelike Entanglement Entropy

Analytic continuations of holographic entanglement entropy in which the boundary subregion extends along a timelike direction have brought a promise of a novel, time-centric probe of the emergence of spacetime. We propose that the bulk carriers of this holographic timelike entanglement entropy are boundary-anchored extremal surfaces probing analytic continuation of holographic spacetimes into complex coordinates. This proposal not only provides a geometric interpretation of all the known cases obtained by direct analytic continuation of closed-form expressions of holographic entanglement entropy of a strip subregion but crucially also opens a window to study holographic timelike entanglement entropy in full generality. We initialize the investigation of complex extremal surfaces anchored on a timelike strip at the boundary of anti-de Sitter black branes. We find multiple complex extremal surfaces and discuss possible principles singling out the physical contribution.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Quasinormal modes of nonthermal fixed points

Quasinormal modes play a prominent role in relaxation of diverse physical systems to equilibria, ranging from astrophysical black holes to tiny droplets of quark-gluon plasma at RHIC and LHC accelerators. We propose that a novel kind of quasinormal modes govern the direct approach to self-similar time evolution of nonthermal fixed points, whose relevance ranges from high energy physics to cold atom gases. We utilize black hole perturbation theory techniques to compute the spectrum of these far from equilibrium quasinormal modes for a kinetic theory with a Focker-Planck collision kernel in isotropic and homogeneous states. Our conclusion is that quasinormal modes of nonthermal fixed points give rise to a tower of progressively more decaying power-law contributions. A byproduct of our analysis is a precise determination and improved understanding of the distribution function characterizing nonthermal fixed points.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Complexity = Anything Can Grow Forever in de Sitter

Recent developments in anti-de Sitter holography point towards the association of an infinite class of covariant objects, the simplest one being codimension-one extremal volumes, with quantum computational complexity in the microscopic description. One of the defining features of these gravitational complexity proposals is describing the persistent growth of black hole interior in classical gravity. It is tempting to assume that the gravitational complexity proposals apply also to gravity outside their native anti-de Sitter setting in which case they may reveal new truths about these cases with much less understood microscopics. Recent first steps in this direction in de Sitter static patch demonstrated a very different behavior from anti-de Sitter holography deemed hyperfast growth: diverging complexification rate after a finite time. We show that this feature is not a necessity and among gravitational complexity proposals there are ones, which predict linear or exponential late-time growth behaviors for complexity in de Sitter static patches persisting classically forever.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Prescaling relaxation to nonthermal attractors

We study how isotropic and homogeneous far-from-equilibrium quantum systems relax to nonthermal attractors, which are of interest for cold atoms and nuclear collisions. We demonstrate that a first-order ordinary differential equation governs the self-similar approach to nonthermal attractors, i.e., the prescaling. We also show that certain natural scaling-breaking terms induce logarithmically slow corrections that prevent the scaling exponents from reaching the constant values during the system's lifetime. We propose that, analogously to hydrodynamic attractors, the appropriate mathematical structure to describe such dynamics is the transseries. We verify our analytic predictions with state-of-the-art 2PI simulations of the large-N vector model and QCD kinetic theory.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Dense Nuclear Matter Equation of State from Heavy-Ion Collisions

The nuclear equation of state (EOS) is at the center of numerous theoretical and experimental efforts in nuclear physics. With advances in microscopic theories for nuclear interactions, the availability of experiments probing nuclear matter under conditions not reached before, endeavors to develop sophisticated and reliable transport simulations to interpret these experiments, and the advent of multi-messenger astronomy, the next decade will bring new opportunities for determining the nuclear matter EOS, elucidating its dependence on density, temperature, and isospin asymmetry. Among controlled terrestrial experiments, collisions of heavy nuclei at intermediate beam energies (from a few tens of MeV/nucleon to about 25 GeV/nucleon in the fixed-target frame) probe the widest ranges of baryon density and temperature, enabling studies of nuclear matter from a few tenths to about 5 times the nuclear saturation density and for temperatures from a few to well above a hundred MeV, respectively. Collisions of neutron-rich isotopes further bring the opportunity to probe effects due to the isospin asymmetry. However, capitalizing on the enormous scientific effort aimed at uncovering the dense nuclear matter EOS, both at RHIC and at FRIB as well as at other international facilities, depends on the continued development of state-of-the-art hadronic transport simulations. This white paper highlights the essential role that heavy-ion collision experiments and hadronic transport simulations play in understanding strong interactions in dense nuclear matter, with an emphasis on how these efforts can be used together with microscopic approaches and neutron star studies to uncover the nuclear EOS.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2024

The Hydrohedron: Bootstrapping Relativistic Hydrodynamics

As an effective theory, relativistic hydrodynamics is fixed by symmetries up to a set of transport coefficients. A lot of effort has been devoted to explicit calculations of these coefficients. Here we propose a shift in perspective: we deploy bootstrap techniques to rule out theories that are inconsistent with microscopic causality. What remains is a universal convex geometry in the space of transport coefficients, which we call the hydrohedron. The landscape of all consistent theories necessarily lie inside or on the edges of the hydrohedron. We analytically construct cross-sections of the hydrohedron corresponding to bounds on transport coefficients that appear in sound and diffusion modes for theories without stochastic fluctuations.

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