ASC Workshops

Quantum Complexity, Integrability, and Chaos

The states of quantum systems grow in complexity over time as entanglement spreads between degrees of freedom. Following ideas in computer science, we formulate the complexity of evolution as the length of the shortest geodesic on the unitary group manifold between the identity and the time evolution operator, and use the SYK family of models with N fermions to study this quantity in free, integrable, and chaotic systems. In all cases, the complexity initially grows linearly in time, and the shortest path lies along the physical time evolution. This linear growth is eventually truncated by "shortcuts" on the unitary manifold that are shorter than the physical time evolution. We explicitly locate such shortcuts and hence show that in the free theory, shortcuts occur at a time of O(N^1/2), truncating complexity growth at this scale. We also find an explicit operator which "fast-forwards" time evolution with this complexity. In a class of integrable theories, we show that shortcuts appear in a time upper bounded by O(poly(N)), again truncating complexity growth. Finally, in chaotic theories we argue that shortcuts do not occur until exponential times, after which it becomes possible to find infinitesimally nearby fixed-complexity approximations to the time evolution operator. We relate these results to the Eigenstate Complexity Hypothesis, a new criterion on the spectrum of energy eigenstates that guarantees an exponential increase of complexity over time that is consistent with maximal chaos.

Recent developments in holography indicate that the semi-classical Euclidean path-integral of Einstein gravity is much more powerful than previously anticipated. It is capable of reproducing a unitary Page curve for black hole evaporation, and can even capture some features of the discrete nature of black hole microstates. Wormhole geometries play a key role in this context. I will propose a mechanism to explain this in the CFT: the OPE Randomness Hypothesis. This ansatz is a generalization of the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis which applies to chaotic CFTs, and treats OPE coefficients of heavy operators as random variables with a given probability distribution. I will present two applications of this framework: First, it resolves a factorization puzzle in AdS_3/CFT_2 due to the genus-2 wormhole, as raised by Maoz and Maldacena. Second, it provides an argument against global symmetries in quantum gravity.

Given that exact global symmetries are forbidden by quantum gravity, it is natural to expect that bounds on the quality of approximate global symmetries exist. So far, holographic arguments have only been provided for the former claim. I will discuss a classification of approximate global symmetries and describe a simple argument, based the Weak Gravity Conjecture, for a quantitative bound on the sub-class of "gauge-derived" global symmetries. This has intriguing relations to wormhole-based arguments, which I will also present. I will end with a brief discussion of the fundamental problems associated with euclidean wormholes and of some recent developments in this context.

The study of quantum effects on black holes including their gravitational backreaction is an important but notoriously hard problem. I will begin by reviewing how the framework of braneworld holography allows to solve it for strongly-coupled quantum conformal fields. Then I will describe a holographic construction of quantum rotating BTZ black holes (quBTZ) using an exact dual four-dimensional bulk solution. Besides yielding the quantum-corrected geometry and the renormalized stress tensor of quBTZ, we use it to show that the quantum black hole entropy, which includes the entanglement of the fields outside the horizon, rather non-trivially satisfies the first law of thermodynamics, while the Bekenstein-Hawking-Wald entropy does not.

We introduce the concept of saturons, systems that saturate a certain bound on entropy, which is imposed

by S-matrix and unitarity. Such objects share certain niversal properties (e.g., the area-law of entropy, near-thermal emission, inner entanglement, ...) that goes well beyond gravity. We give an example from QCD. We show that black holes and de Sitter are saturons and this determines their physical properties such as their entanglement curves. Both exhibit anomalous quantum break-time which for de Sitter is deadly. Through this mechanism, the S-matrix formulation

of quantum gravity/string theory excludes de Sitter vacua.

I will describe the four-derivative corrections to four-dimensional N=2 minimal gauged supergravity and show that they are controlled by two constants. Interestingly, the solutions of the equations of motion in the two-derivative theory are not modified by the higher-derivative corrections. I will use this to arrive at a general formula for the regularized on-shell action for any asymptotically locally AdS_4 solution of the theory and show how the higher-derivative corrections affect black hole thermodynamic quantities in a universal way. I will employ these results in the context of holography to derive new explicit results for the subleading corrections in the large N expansion of supersymmetric partition functions on various compact manifolds for a large class of three-dimensional SCFTs arising from M2- and M5-branes. I will also briefly discuss possible extensions and generalizations of these results.

Computational complexity is a notion from information theory, initially defined for finite-dimensional systems, measuring the number of gates that have to be applied to a given reference state to reach a target state. Susskind’s proposals for defining computational complexity also for characterising quantum properties black holes have triggered significant interest in defining computational complexity also for quantum field theories, i.e. for infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. The idea is to establish a precise holographic dictionary for complexity. There are successful proposals for complexity definitions in free quantum field theory. Recently, there have been several proposals also for interacting theories, mostly in the context of conformal field theories, building gate sets from symmetry generators. Questions to be discussed include, in addition to further questions about the talks on the subject presented at the workshop: - What is the status of defining complexity for interacting field theories? - How do different proposals for gate sets, reference states and cost functions compare to each other? - What is the status of establishing a holographic dictionary? - What are promising avenues to be pursued for further progress?

The principle of holography of information states that, in any theory of quantum gravity, a copy of all the information available on a Cauchy slice is also available near the boundary of the slice. This principle can be made precise and proved, under weak assumptions, for theories of gravity in AdS and in flat space and it has interesting implications for black holes. In this talk, we will describe how this principle can be tested within the realm of low-energy effective field theory. We will describe how observers placed in a low-energy state near the boundary of AdS can use a simple physical protocol to completely identify the state of the bulk without directly visiting the bulk. We will also describe low-energy thought experiments that can be used to similarly obtain information about the bulk state from near the boundary of flat space.