We study a notion of operator growth known as Krylov complexity in free and interacting massive scalar quantum field theories in d-dimensions at finite temperature. We consider the effects of mass, one-loop self-energy due to perturbative interactions, and finite ultraviolet cutoffs in continuous momentum space. These deformations change the behavior of Lanczos coefficients and Krylov complexity and induce effects such as the “staggering” of the former into two families, a decrease in the exponential growth rate of the latter, and transitions in their asymptotic behavior. We also discuss the relation between the existence of a mass gap and the property of staggering, and the relation between our ultraviolet cutoffs in continuous theories and lattice theories.

In this work, we investigate spectral complexity and Krylov complexity in quantum billiard systems at finite temperature. We study both circle and stadium billiards as paradigmatic examples of integrable and nonintegrable quantum-mechanical systems, respectively. We show that the saturation value and timescale of spectral complexity may be used to probe the nonintegrability of the system since we find that when computed for the circle billiard, it saturates at a later timescale compared to the stadium billiards. This observation is verified for different temperatures. Furthermore, we study the Krylov complexity of the position operator and its associated Lanczos coefficients at finite temperature using the Wightman inner product. We find that the growth rate of the Lanczos coefficients saturates the conjectured universal bound at low temperatures. Additionally, we also find that even a subset of the Lanczos coefficients can potentially serve as an indicator of integrability, as they demonstrate erratic behavior specifically in the circle billiard case, in contrast to the stadium billiard. Finally, we also study Krylov entropy and verify its early-time logarithmic relation with Krylov complexity in both types of billiard systems. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

A bstract: We explore spread and spectral complexity in quantum systems that exhibit a transition from integrability to chaos, namely the mixed-field Ising model and the next-to-nearest-neighbor deformation of the Heisenberg XXZ spin chain. We corroborate the observation that the presence of a peak in spread complexity before its saturation, is a characteristic feature in chaotic systems. We find that, in general, the saturation value of spread complexity post-peak depends not only on the spectral statistics of the Hamiltonian, but also on the specific state. However, there appears to be a maximal universal bound determined by the symmetries and dimension of the Hamiltonian, which is realized by the thermofield double state (TFD) at infinite temperature. We also find that the time scales at which the spread complexity and spectral form factor change their behaviour agree with each other and are independent of the chaotic properties of the systems. In the case of spectral complexity, we identify that the key factor determining its saturation value and timescale in chaotic systems is given by minimum energy difference in the theory’s spectrum. This explains observations made in the literature regarding its earlier saturation in chaotic systems compared to their integrable counterparts. We conclude by discussing the properties of the TFD which, we conjecture, make it suitable for probing signatures of chaos in quantum many-body systems.

The IP matrix model is a simple large N quantum mechanical model made up of an adjoint harmonic oscillator plus a fundamental harmonic oscillator. It is a model introduced previously as a toy model of the gauge theory dual of an AdS black hole. In the large N limit, one can solve the Schwinger-Dyson equation for the fundamental correlator, and at sufficiently high temperature, this model shows key signatures of thermalization and information loss; the correlator decay exponentially in time, and the spectral density becomes continuous and gapless. We study the Lanczos coefficients b_n in this model and at sufficiently high temperature, it grows linearly in n with logarithmic corrections, which is one of the fastest growth under certain conditions. As a result, the Krylov complexity grows exponentially in time as $$ \sim \exp \left(\mathcal{O}\left(\sqrt{t}\right)\right) $$∼ exp O t . These results indicate that the IP model at sufficiently high temperature is chaotic.

Krylov complexity has been proposed as a diagnostic of chaos in non-integrable lattice and quantum mechanical systems, and if the system is chaotic, Krylov complexity grows exponentially with time. However, when Krylov complexity is applied to quantum field theories, even in free theory, it grows exponentially with time. This exponential growth in free theory is simply due to continuous momentum in non-compact space and has nothing to do with the mass spectrum of theories. Thus by compactifying space sufficiently, exponential growth of Krylov complexity due to continuous momentum can be avoided. In this paper, we propose that the Krylov complexity of operators such as $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O = Tr[F _μν F ^μν ] can be an order parameter of confinement/deconfinement transitions in large N quantum field theories on such a compactified space. We explicitly give a prescription of the compactification at finite temperature to distinguish the continuity of spectrum due to momentum and mass spectrum. We then calculate the Krylov complexity of $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 4, 0 SU(N) Yang-Mills theories in the large N limit by using holographic analysis of the spectrum and show that the behavior of Krylov complexity reflects the confinement/deconfinement phase transitions through the continuity of mass spectrum.

We continue the analysis of the Krylov complexity in the IP matrix model. In a previous paper, [1], for a fundamental operator, it was shown that at zero temperature, the Krylov complexity oscillates and does not grow, but in the infinite temperature limit, the Krylov complexity grows exponentially in time as $$ \sim \exp \left(\mathcal{O}\left(\sqrt{t}\right)\right) $$∼ exp O t . We study how the Krylov complexity changes from a zero-temperature oscillation to an infinite-temperature exponential growth. At low temperatures, the spectral density is approximated as collections of infinite Wigner semicircles. We showed that this infinite collection of branch cuts yields linear growth to the Lanczos coefficients and gives exponential growth of the Krylov complexity. Thus the IP model for any nonzero temperature shows exponential growth for the Krylov complexity even though the Green function decays by a power law in time. We also study the Lanczos coefficients and the Krylov complexity in the IOP matrix model taking into account the 1/N² corrections. There, the Lanczos coefficients are constants and the Krylov complexity does not grow exponentially as expected.