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Swingle, Brian

Publications and source records attributed to Swingle, Brian.

48 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2019

Black hole microstate cosmology

In this note, we explore the possibility that certain high-energy holographic CFT states correspond to black hole microstates with a geometrical behind-the-horizon region, modelled by a portion of a second asymptotic region terminating at an end-of-the-world (ETW) brane. We study the time-dependent physics of this behind-the-horizon region, whose ETW boundary geometry takes the form of a closed FRW spacetime. We show that in many cases, this behind-the-horizon physics can be probed directly by looking at the time dependence of entanglement entropy for sufficiently large spatial CFT subsystems. We study in particular states defined via Euclidean evolution from conformal boundary states and give specific predictions for the behavior of the entanglement entropy in this case. We perform analogous calculations for the SYK model and find qualitative agreement with our expectations. We also calculate holographic complexity for the d = 2 ETW geometries, finding that complexity-action and complexity-volume proposals give the same linear growth at late times, but differ at early times. A fascinating possibility is that for certain states, we might have gravity localized to the ETW brane as in the Randall-Sundrum II scenario for cosmology. In this case, the effective description of physics beyond the horizon could be a big bang/big crunch cosmology of the same dimensionality as the CFT. In this case, the d -dimensional CFT describing the black hole microstate would give a precise, microscopic description of the d -dimensional cosmological physics.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Quantum Lyapunov spectrum

We introduce a simple quantum generalization of the spectrum of classical Lyapunov exponents. We apply it to the SYK and XXZ models, and study the Lyapunov growth and entropy production. Our numerical results suggest that a black hole is not just the fastest scrambler, but also the fastest entropy generator. We also study the statistical features of the quantum Lyapunov spectrum and find universal random matrix behavior, which resembles the recently-found universality in classical chaos. The random matrix behavior is lost when the system is deformed away from chaos, towards integrability or a many-body localized phase. We propose that quantum systems holographically dual to gravity satisfy this universality in a strong form. We further argue that the quantum Lyapunov spectrum contains important additional information beyond the largest Lyapunov exponent and hence provides us with a better characterization of chaos in quantum systems.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2019

Subsystem complexity and holography

As a probe of circuit complexity in holographic field theories, we study sub-system analogues based on the entanglement wedge of the bulk quantities appearing in the “complexity = volume” and “complexity = action” conjectures. We calculate these quantities for one exterior region of an eternal static neutral or charged black hole in general dimensions, dual to a thermal state on one boundary with or without chemical potential respectively, as well as for a shock wave geometry. We then define several analogues of circuit complexity for mixed states, and use tensor networks to gain intuition about them. In the action approach, we find two possible cases depending on an ambiguity in the definition of the action associated with a counterterm. In one case, there is a promising qualitative match between the holographic action and what we call the purification complexity, the minimum number of gates required to prepare an arbitrary purification of the given mixed state. In the other case, the match is to what we call the basis complexity, the minimum number of gates required to prepare the given mixed state starting from a minimal complexity state with the same eigenvalue spectrum. One way to fix this ambiguity is to choose an action definition such that UV divergent part is positive, in which case the best match to the action result is the basis complexity. In contrast, the holographic volume does not appear to match any of our definitions of mixed-state complexity.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2017

Linearity of holographic entanglement entropy

Here, we consider the question of whether the leading contribution to the entanglement entropy in holographic CFTs is truly given by the expectation value of a linear operator as is suggested by the Ryu-Takayanagi formula. We investigate this property by computing the entanglement entropy, via the replica trick, in states dual to superpositions of macroscopically distinct geometries and find it consistent with evaluating the expectation value of the area operator within such states. However, we find that this fails once the number of semi-classical states in the superposition grows exponentially in the central charge of the CFT. Moreover, in certain such scenarios we find that the choice of surface on which to evaluate the area operator depends on the density matrix of the entire CFT. This nonlinearity is enforced in the bulk via the homology prescription of Ryu-Takayanagi. We thus conclude that the homology constraint is not a linear property in the CFT. We also discuss the existence of entropy operators in general systems with a large number of degrees of freedom.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

Mixeds-sourcery: Building many-body states using bubbles of nothing

We recently introduced the idea of s-sourcery [B. Swingle and J. McGreevy, Phys. Rev. B 93, 045127 (2016)], a general formalism for building many-body quantum ground states using renormalization-group-inspired quantum circuits. In this work, we define a generalized notion of s-sourcery that applies to mixed states and study its properties and applicability. For our examples we focus on thermal states of local Hamiltonians. We prove a number of theorems establishing the prevalence of mixed s-source fixed points, giving results for free fermion models, conformal field theories, holographic models, and topological phases. Thermal double states (also called thermofield double states) and the machinery of approximate conditional independence are used heavily in the constructions. For a large class of models we provide an information theoretic argument for the existence of a local Hamiltonian whose ground state is the thermal double state, and in some cases we construct such a Hamiltonian.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Lieb-Robinson Bound and the Butterfly Effect in Quantum Field Theories

As experiments are increasingly able to probe the quantum dynamics of systems with many degrees of freedom, it is interesting to probe fundamental bounds on the dynamics of quantum information. We elaborate on the relationship between one such bound—the Lieb-Robinson bound—and the butterfly effect in strongly coupled quantum systems. The butterfly effect implies the ballistic growth of local operators in time, which can be quantified with the “butterfly” velocity v B . Similarly, the Lieb-Robinson velocity places a state-independent ballistic upper bound on the size of time evolved operators in nonrelativistic lattice models. Here, we argue that v B is a state-dependent effective Lieb-Robinson velocity. We study the butterfly velocity in a wide variety of quantum field theories using holography and compare with free-particle computations to understand the role of strong coupling. We find that v B remains constant or decreases with decreasing temperature. We also comment on experimental prospects and on the relationship between the butterfly velocity and signaling.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Complexity, action, and black holes

In an earlier paper "Complexity Equals Action" we conjectured that the quantum computational complexity of a holographic state is given by the classical action of a region in the bulk (the `Wheeler-DeWitt' patch). We provide calculations for the results quoted in that paper, explain how it fits into a broader (tensor) network of ideas, and elaborate on the hypothesis that black holes are the fastest computers in nature.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗