English

Thermal quenching of classical and semiclassical scrambling

Chaotic Dynamics 2024-03-25 v2

Abstract

Quantum scrambling often gives rise to short-time exponential growth in out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs). The scrambling rate over an isolated saddle point at finite temperature is shown here to be reduced by a hierarchy of quenching processes. Two of these appear in the classical limit, where escape from the neighbourhood of the saddle reduces the rate by a factor of two, and thermal fluctuations around the saddle reduce it further; a third process can be explained semiclassically as arising from quantum thermal fluctuations around the saddle, which are also responsible for imposing the Maldacena-Shenker-Stanford bound.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2304.05913,
  title  = {Thermal quenching of classical and semiclassical scrambling},
  author = {Vijay Ganesh Sadhasivam and Andrew C. Hunt and Lars Meuser and Yair Litman and Stuart C. Althorpe},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.05913},
  year   = {2024}
}