IAS High Energy Theory Seminar
The Onset of Quantum Chaos in Disordered Systems
This seminar will be presented in-person in Wolfensohn Hall at the IAS and on Zoom.
For contact-tracing purposes all off-campus attendees must register for this seminar:
REGISTRATION FORM
All in-person attendees must be fully vaccinated and masks are required in all indoor spaces (except while actively eating). Additionally, all off-campus attendees are required to upload proof of vaccination via the IAS CrowdPass App .
Abstract: We study the Lyapunov exponent in disordered quantum field theories. Generically the Lyapunov exponent can only be computed in isolated CFTs, and little is known about the way in which chaos grows as we deform the theory away from weak coupling. In this paper we describe families of theories in which the disorder coupling is an exactly marginal deformation, allowing us to follow the Lyapunov exponent from weak to strong coupling. We find surprising behaviors in some cases, including a discontinuous transition into chaos. We also describe a new method allowing for computations in nontrivial CFTs deformed by disorder at leading order in 1/N.