arXiv subjects

Pak Hang Chris Lau

Publications and source records attributed to Pak Hang Chris Lau.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Matter Coupling of Dirac Matter in the Context of the SYK Model: Non-Gaussian Random Couplings and Bulk Mass Deformations

We elaborate further on the matter coupling of Dirac matter in the SYK framework, incorporating non-Gaussian coupling distributions and bulk fermion mass effects. Our study analyzes quartic matter couplings generated by a non-Gaussian distribution as an illustrative example. The introduction of bulk-fermion mass alters the boundary coupling between the Dirac and Majorana fermions. The averaged adjacent gap ratio is sensitive to the distribution of random couplings, which remains independent of the Hamiltonian's symmetry. The generalization of the SYK model to non-Gaussian distributions and the inclusion of bulk fermion mass remain qualitatively similar to the Gaussian and massless cases. Key deviations are observed only in the time scales for the linear ramp in the spectral form factor and the saturation of entanglement entropy.

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arXiv2025

Detecting quantum chaos via pseudo-entropy

Quantum informatic quantities such as entanglement entropy are useful in detecting quantum phase transitions. Recently, a new entanglement measure called pseudo-entropy was proposed which is a generalization of the more well-known entanglement entropy. It has many nice properties and is useful in the study of post-selection measurements. In this paper, one of our goals is to explore the properties of pseudo-entropy and study its effectiveness as a quantum chaos diagnostic, i.e., as a tool to distinguish between chaotic and integrable systems. Using various variants of the SYK model, we study the signal of quantum chaos captured in the pseudo-entropy and relate it to the spectral form factor (SFF) and local operator entanglement (LOE).

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arXiv2024

Gravitational EFT for dissipative open systems

We elaborate on the effective field theory (EFT) construction for dissipative open systems coupled to dynamical gravity, in light of recent developments on the EFT of dissipative hydrodynamics (HydroEFT). Our construction is based on the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism and its symmetries as well as microscopic unitarity. A key aspect of dynamical gravity is that gravity couples to all degrees of freedom universally, hence the EFT has to take into account the energy-momentum tensor of the environment to which the energy escapes from the dissipative system of interest. We incorporate this effect by modeling the environment based on HydroEFT, assuming validity of the derivative expansion of the environment sector. For illustration, we apply our EFT recipe to a dissipative scalar field coupled to dynamical gravity that can be used, e.g., for dissipative inflation. In particular we quantify impacts of fluctuations in the environment sector on the scalar dynamics. We also apply the same framework to dissipative gravity, discussing dissipative gravitational waves and the generalized second law of black hole thermodynamics.

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arXiv2024

Emergence of Time from Unitary Equivalence

We discuss the concept of unitary equivalence $\hat{H}\sim\hat{U}^{\dagger}\hat{H}_{\mathrm{mod}}\hat{U}$ between the modular Hamiltonian $\hat{H}_{\mathrm{mod}}$ and the subsystem Hamiltonian $\hat{H}$ in the context of realizing the emergence of time through a unitary operator $\hat{U}$. This concept suggests a duality between the modular flow and time evolution. Additionally, requiring unitary equivalence implies a connection between the "Modular Chaos Bound" and the "Chaos Bound". Furthermore, we demonstrate this duality using quantum chaos diagnostic quantities in the thermofield double state of a fermionic system. Quantum chaos diagnostic quantities are mathematical measures that characterize chaotic behavior in quantum systems. By examining these quantities in the thermofield double state, we illustrate the duality between them and the modular Hamiltonian. We show a specific duality between correlators, the spectral form factor, and the Loschmidt echo with the modular Hamiltonian. The spectral form factor is a quantity that provides information about the energy spectrum of a quantum system, while the Loschmidt echo characterizes the sensitivity of a system's modular time evolution to perturbations. Finally, we demonstrate that a different entanglement spectrum does not impose the same constraint on the subsystem Hamiltonian. The entanglement spectrum is related to entanglement entropy and provides information about the eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix associated with a subsystem. We discuss complex concepts related to the interplay between quantum chaos, time emergence, and the relationship between modular and subsystem Hamiltonians. These ideas are part of ongoing research in quantum information theory and related fields.

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arXiv2024

On the Backreaction of Dirac Matter in JT Gravity and SYK Model

We model backreaction in AdS$_2$ JT gravity via a proposed boundary dual Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev quantum dot coupled to Dirac fermion matter and study it from the perspective of quantum entanglement and chaos. The boundary effective action accounts for the backreaction through a linear coupling of the Dirac fermions to the Gaussian-random two-body Majorana interaction term in the low-energy limit. We calculate the time evolution of the entanglement entropy between graviton and Dirac fermion fields for a separable initial state and find that it initially increases and then saturates to a finite value. Moreover, in the limit of a large number of fermions, we find a maximally entangled state between the Majorana and Dirac fields in the saturation region, implying a transition of the von Neumann algebra of observables from type I to type II. This transition in turn indicates a loss of information in the holographically dual emergent spacetime. We corroborate these observations with a detailed numerical computation of the averaged nearest-neighbor gap ratio of the boundary spectrum and provide a useful complement to quantum entanglement studies of holography.

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arXiv2022

Quantum chaos, scrambling and operator growth in $T\bar{T}$ deformed SYK models

In this work, we investigate the quantum chaos in various $T\bar{T}$-deformed SYK models with finite $N$, including the SYK$_4$, the supersymmetric SYK$_4$, and the SYK$_2$ models. We numerically study the evolution of the spectral form factor (SFF), the out-of-time ordered correlator (OTOC), and the Krylov complexity. We find that the characteristic evolution of the SFF, OTOC and K-complexity of both the SYK$_4$ and SSYK$_4$ models remains unchanged under the deformation, which implies that the properties of quantum chaos is preserved. We also identify a many-body localization behavior in the deformed SYK$_2$ model.

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arXiv2022

Page curve and symmetries

Motivated by the quantum process of black hole evaporation and its implications for symmetries, we consider a qubit system with a random dynamics as a toy model of black hole. We compute its symmetry-resolved entropies and discuss its implications. We first consider the case where charges are conserved and compute the symmetry-resolved entropies. We derive a symmetry-resolved analogue of the Page curve. We then consider the case where symmetry is explicitly broken and charges are no longer conserved. It serves as a toy model for global symmetry breaking in black hole evaporation. Despite the simple framework, the symmetry-resolved entropies capture various interesting features during the analogous process of black hole evaporation in our qubit model.

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arXiv2021

Correlated Disorder in the SYK$_{2}$ model

We study the SYK$_{2}$ model of $N$ Majorana fermions with random quadratic interactions through a detailed spectral analysis and by coupling the model to 2- and 4-point sources. In particular, we define the generalized spectral form factor and level spacing distribution function by generalizing from the partition function to the generating function. For $N=2$, we obtain an exact solution of the generalized spectral form factor. It exhibits qualitatively similar behavior to the higher $N$ case with a source term. The exact solution helps understand the behavior of the generalized spectral form factor. We calculate the generalized level spacing distribution function and the mean value of the adjacent gap ratio defined by the generating function. For the SYK$_2$ model with a 4-point source term, we find a Gaussian unitary ensemble behavior in the near-integrable region of the theory, which indicates a transition to chaos. This behavior is confirmed by the connected part of the generalized spectral form factor with an unfolded spectrum. The departure from this Gaussian random matrix behavior as the relative strength of the source term is increased is consistent with the observation that the 4-point source term alone, without the SYK$_2$ couplings turned on, exhibits an integrable spectrum from the spectral form factor and level spacing distribution function in the large $N$ limit.

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arXiv2019

Randomness and Chaos in Qubit Models

We introduce randomness into a class of integrable models and study the spectral form factor as a diagnostic to distinguish between randomness and chaos. Spectral form factors exhibit a characteristic dip-ramp-plateau behavior in the $N>2$ SYK$_2$ model at high temperatures that is absent in the $N=2$ SYK$_2$ model. Our results suggest that this dip-ramp-plateau behavior implies the existence of random eigenvectors in a quantum many-body system. To further support this observation, we examine the Gaussian random transverse Ising model and obtain consistent results without suffering from small $N$ issues. Finally, we demonstrate numerically that expectation values of observables computed in a random quantum state at late times are equivalent to the expectation values computed in the thermal ensemble in a Gaussian random one-qubit model.

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arXiv2016

Chern-Simons 5-form and Holographic Baryons

In the top-down holographic model of QCD based on D4/D8-branes in type IIA string theory and some of the bottom up models, the low energy effective theory of mesons is described by a 5 dimensional Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theory in a certain curved background with two boundaries. The 5 dimensional Chern-Simons term plays a crucial role to reproduce the correct chiral anomaly in 4 dimensional massless QCD. However, there are some subtle ambiguities in the definition of the Chern-Simons term for the cases with topologically non-trivial gauge bundles, which include the configurations with baryons. In particular, for the cases with three flavors, it was pointed out by Hata and Murata that the naive Chern-Simons term does not lead to an important constraint on the baryon spectrum, which is needed to pick out the correct baryon spectrum observed in nature. In this paper, we propose a formulation of well-defined Chern-Simons term which can be used for the cases with baryons, and show that it recovers the correct baryon constraint as well as the chiral anomaly in QCD.

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