Krylov complexity measures the spread of the wavefunction in the Krylov basis, which is constructed using the Hamiltonian and an initial state. We investigate the evolution of the maximally entangled state in the Krylov basis for both chaotic and non-chaotic systems. For this purpose, we derive an Ehrenfest theorem for the Krylov complexity, which reveals its close relation to the spectrum. Our findings suggest that neither the linear growth nor the saturation of Krylov complexity is necessarily associated with chaos. However, for chaotic systems, we observe a universal rise-slope-ramp-plateau behavior in the transition probability from the initial state to one of the Krylov basis states. Moreover, a long ramp in the transition probability is a signal for spectral rigidity, characterizing quantum chaos. Also, this ramp is directly responsible for the late-time peak of Krylov complexity observed in the literature. On the other hand, for non-chaotic systems, this long ramp is absent. Therefore, our results help to clarify which features of the wave function time evolution in Krylov space characterize chaos. We exemplify this by considering the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model with two-body or four-body interactions.

We construct a gravity dual for charge density waves (CDWs) in which the translational symmetry along one spatial direction is spontaneously broken. Our linear perturbation calculation on the gravity side produces the frequency dependence of the optical conductivity, which exhibits the two familiar features of CDWs, namely, the pinned collective mode and gapped single-particle excitation. These two features indicate that our gravity dual also provides a new mechanism to implement the metal to insulator phase transition by CDWs, which is further confirmed by the fact that dc conductivity decreases with the decreased temperature below the critical temperature.

We construct the simplest gravitational dual model of a superconductor on Q-lattices. We analyze the condition for the existence of a critical temperature at which the charged scalar field will condense. In contrast to the holographic superconductor on ionic lattices, the presence of Q-lattices will suppress the condensate of the scalar field and lower the critical temperature. In particular, when the Q-lattice background is dual to a deep insulating phase, the condensation would never occur for some small charges. Furthermore, we numerically compute the optical conductivity in the superconducting regime. It turns out that the presence of Q-lattice does not remove the pole in the imaginary part of the conductivity, ensuring the appearance of a delta function in the real part. We also evaluate the gap which in general depends on the charge of the scalar field as well as the Q-lattice parameters. Nevertheless, when the charge of the scalar field is relatively large and approaches the probe limit, the gap becomes universal with ω _g ≃ 9T _c which is consistent with the result for conventional holographic superconductors.

We investigate the holographic entanglement entropy (HEE) of a strip geometry in four dimensional Q-lattice backgrounds, which exhibit metal-insulator transitions in the dual field theory. Remarkably, we find that the HEE always displays a peak in the vicinity of the quantum critical points. Our model provides the first direct evidence that the HEE can be used to characterize the quantum phase transition (QPT). We also conjecture that the maximization behavior of HEE at quantum critical points would be universal in general holographic models.