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Pole skipping is a recently discovered subtle effect in the thermal energy density retarded two point function at a special point in the complex $(\omega,p)$ planes. We propose that pole skipping is determined by the stress tensor contribution to many-body chaos, and the special point is at $(\omega,p)_\text{p.s.}= i \lambda^{(T)}(1,1/u_B^{(T)})$, where $\lambda^{(T)}=2\pi/\beta$ and $u_B^{(T)}$ are the stress tensor contributions to the Lyapunov exponent and the butterfly velocity respectively. While this proposal is consistent with previous studies conducted for maximally chaotic theories, where the stress tensor dominates chaos, it clarifies that one cannot use pole skipping to extract the Lyapunov exponent of a theory, which obeys $\lambda\leq \lambda^{(T)}$. On the other hand, in a large class of strongly coupled but non-maximally chaotic theories $u_B^{(T)}$ is the true butterfly velocity and we conjecture that $u_B\leq u_B^{(T)}$ is a universal bound. While it remains a challenge to explain pole skipping in a general framework, we provide a stringent test of our proposal in the large-$q$ limit of the SYK chain, where we determine $\lambda,\, u_B,$ and the energy density two point function in closed form for all values of the coupling, interpolating between the free and maximally chaotic limits. Since such an explicit expression for a thermal correlator is one of a kind, we take the opportunity to analyze many of its properties: the coupling dependence of the diffusion constant, the dispersion relations of poles, and the convergence properties of all order hydrodynamics., Comment: 39 pages, 13 figures

Riverbank filtered drinking water supply systems are strongly dependent on the river stage. Climate change-induced extremely low or high river stage may cause water quantity and quality problems. In this study, a riverbank-filtered drinking water supply system along the Danube River was investigated from a radioactivity point of view: we aimed to understand the origin of elevated (>100 mBq L–1) gross alpha activity measured in some wells and the variation in water quality with river level fluctuation. 10 producing, 2 monitoring wells, and the Danube were sampled at lower and higher river stages. The water samples were analyzed for major ions and trace components. Total U (234U+235U+238U) and 226Ra activity concentration were determined by alpha spectrometry using Nucfilm discs, and 222Rn activity was measured by liquid scintillation counting. Total uranium activity was measured in the highest concentration (up to 334 mBq L–1). Radium and radon activities were barely above the detection limit. Based on our results the previously measured elevated gross alpha activity is most likely caused by dissolved uranium in the groundwater. Uranium activity concentrations show increasing values from N to S which corresponds well to the occurrence of organic matter-rich, clayey floodplain deposits underlying the aquifer. Besides spatial variation, a temporal change can also be observed: lower uranium activity was measured at a lower river stage (32–248 mBq L–1) compared to a higher river stage (26–334 mBq L–1). This phenomenon could be explained by the dynamic relationship between the groundwater and the river. At the low river stage, oxygen-rich (ground)water flows from the river toward the inland and may cause the remobilization of uranium from the clayey basement layers. This process will be more and more dominant by extremely low river stages during long-lasting drought periods in the future causing water quality problems. The research was funded by the National Multidisciplinary Laboratory for Climate Change, RRF-2.3.1-21-2022-00014 project.

We study the low-energy limit of Wilson lines (charged impurities) in conformal gauge theories in 2+1 and 3+1 dimensions. As a function of the representation of the Wilson line, certain defect operators can become marginal, leading to interesting renormalization group flows and for sufficiently large representations to complete or partial screening by charged fields. This result is universal: in large enough representations, Wilson lines are screened by the charged matter fields. We observe that the onset of the screening instability is associated with fixed-point mergers. We study this phenomenon in a variety of applications. In some cases, the screening of the Wilson lines takes place by dimensional transmutation and the generation of an exponentially large scale. We identify the space of infrared conformal Wilson lines in weakly coupled gauge theories in 3+1 dimensions and determine the screening cloud due to bosons or fermions. We also study QED in 2+1 dimensions in the large $N_f$ limit and identify the nontrivial conformal Wilson lines. We briefly discuss 't Hooft lines in 3+1-dimensional gauge theories and find that they are screened in weakly coupled gauge theories with simply connected gauge groups. In non-Abelian gauge theories with S-duality, this together with our analysis of the Wilson lines gives a compelling picture for the screening of the line operators as a function of the coupling., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, v2 references updated, v3 minor changes, journal version

We study operators with large internal charge in boundary conformal field theories (BCFTs) with internal symmetries. Using the state-operator correspondence and the existence of a macroscopic limit, we find a non-trivial relation between the scaling dimension of the lowest dimensional CFT and BCFT charged operators to leading order in the charge. We also construct the superfluid effective field theory for theories with boundaries and use it to systematically calculate the BCFT spectrum in a systematic expansion. We verify explicitly many of the predictions from the EFT analysis in concrete examples including the classical conformal scalar field with a $|\phi|^6$ interaction in three dimensions and the $O(2)$ Wilson-Fisher model near four dimensions in the presence of boundaries. In the appendices we additionally discuss a systematic background field approach towards Ward identities in general boundary and defect conformal field theories, and clarify its relation with Noether's theorem in perturbative theories., Comment: 51 pages, 2 figures, v2 matches journal version

Understanding the fate of semi-classical black hole solutions at very late times is one of the most important open questions in quantum gravity. In this paper, we provide a path integral definition of the volume of the black hole interior and study it at arbitrarily late times for black holes in various models of two-dimensional gravity. Because of a novel universal cancellation between the contributions of the semi-classical black hole spectrum and some of its non-perturbative corrections, we find that, after a linear growth at early times, the length of the interior saturates at a time, and towards a value, that is exponentially large in the entropy of the black hole. This provides a non-perturbative confirmation of the complexity equals volume proposal since complexity is also expected to plateau at the same value and at the same time., Comment: 36 pages, 10 figures

Conformal Field Theories (CFTs) have rich dynamics in heavy states. We describe the constraints due to spontaneously broken boost and dilatation symmetries in such states. The spontaneously broken boost symmetries require the existence of new low-lying primaries whose scaling dimension gap, we argue, scales as $O(1)$. We demonstrate these ideas in various states, including fluid, superfluid, mean field theory, and Fermi surface states. We end with some remarks about the large charge limit in 2d and discuss a theory of a single compact boson with an arbitrary conformal anomaly., Comment: 50+13 pages,4 figures; matches the published version

Recently an effective membrane theory valid in a “hydrodynamic limit” was proposed to describe entanglement dynamics of chaotic systems based on results in random quantum circuits and holographic gauge theories. In this paper, we show that this theory is robust under a large set of generalizations. In generic quench protocols we find that the membrane couples geometrically to hydrodynamics, joining quenches are captured by branes in the effective theory, and the entanglement of time evolved local operators can be computed by probing a time fold geometry with the membrane. We also demonstrate that the structure of the effective theory does not change under finite coupling corrections holographically dual to higher derivative gravity and that subleading orders in the hydrodynamic expansion can be incorporated by including higher derivative terms in the effective theory.

There is a simple bound on how fast the entanglement entropy of a subregion of a many-body quantum system can saturate in a quench: $t_\text{sat}\geq R/v_B$, where $t_\text{sat}$ is the saturation time, $R$ the radius of the largest inscribed sphere, and $v_B$ the butterfly velocity characterizing operator growth. By combining analytic and numerical approaches, we show that in systems with a holographic dual, the saturation time is equal to this lower bound for a variety of differently shaped entangling surfaces, implying that the dual black holes saturate the entanglement entropy as fast as possible. This finding adds to the growing list of tasks that black holes are the fastest at. We furthermore analyze the complete time evolution of entanglement entropy for large regions with a variety of shapes, yielding more detailed information about the process of thermalization in these systems., Comment: 5 pages and 5 figures + supplemental material. v2: improved text, matches published version, v3: fixed a typo

A simple probe of chaos and operator growth in many-body quantum systems is the out of time ordered four point function. In a large class of local systems, the effects of chaos in this correlator build up exponentially fast inside the so called butterfly cone. It has been previously observed that the growth of these effects is organized along rays and can be characterized by a velocity dependent Lyapunov exponent, $\lambda({\bf v})$. We show that this exponent is bounded inside the butterfly cone as $\lambda({\bf v})\leq 2\pi T(1-|{\bf v}|/v_B)$, where $T$ is the temperature and $v_B$ is the butterfly speed. This result generalizes the chaos bound of Maldacena, Shenker and Stanford. We study $\lambda({\bf v})$ in some examples such as two dimensional SYK models and holographic gauge theories, and observe that in these systems the bound gets saturated at some critical velocity $v_*, Comment: 35 pages, 15 figures. v2: published version

Recently, an effective {\it membrane theory} was proposed that describes the ``hydrodynamic'' regime of the entanglement dynamics for general chaotic systems. Motivated by the new {\it bit threads} formulation of holographic entanglement entropy, given in terms of a convex optimization problem based on flow maximization, or equivalently tight packing of bit threads, we reformulate the membrane theory as a max flow problem by proving a max flow-min cut theorem. In the context of holography, we explain the relation between the max flow program dual to the membrane theory and the max flow program dual to the holographic surface extremization prescription by providing an explicit map from the membrane to the bulk, and derive the former from the latter in the ``hydrodynamic'' regime without reference to minimal surfaces or membranes., Comment: 31 pages, 8 figures; v2: Improved figures, references added, a new discussion section was included, matches the published version

Two-dimensional CFTs and integrable models have an infinite set of conserved KdV higher spin currents. These currents can be argued to remain conserved under the $T\bar{T}$ deformation and its generalizations. We determine the flow equations the KdV charges obey under the $T\bar{T}$ deformation: they behave as probes "riding the Burgers flow" of the energy eigenvalues. We also study a Lorentz-breaking $T_{s+1}\bar{T}$ deformation built from a KdV current and the stress tensor, and find a super-Hagedorn growth of the density of states., Comment: 39 pages. v2: references added, version published in SciPost

Recently, a minimal membrane description of the entanglement dynamics of large regions in generic chaotic systems was conjectured in arXiv:1803.00089. Analytic results in random circuits and spin chain numerics support this theory. We show that the results found by the author in arXiv:1612.00082 about the dynamics of entanglement entropy in theories with a holographic dual can be reformulated in terms of the same minimal membrane, providing strong evidence that the membrane theory describes all chaotic systems. We discuss the implications of our results for tensor network approaches to holography and the holographic renormalization group., Comment: v2: minor improvements in presentation v1: 9 pages, 4 figures

Recent work by Zamolodchikov and others has uncovered a solvable irrelevant deformation of general 2D CFTs, defined by turning on the dimension 4 operator $$ T\overline{T} $$ T T ¯ ,the product of the left- and right-moving stress tensor. We propose that in the holographic dual, this deformation represents a geometric cutoff that removes the asymptotic region of AdS and places the QFT on a Dirichlet wall at finite radial distance r = r c in the bulk. As a quantitative check of the proposed duality, we compute the signal propagation speed, energy spectrum, and thermodynamic relations on both sides. In all cases, we obtain a precise match. We derive an exact RG flow equation for the metric dependence of the effective action of the $$ T\overline{T} $$ T T ¯ deformed theory, and find that it coincides with the Hamilton-Jacobi equation that governs the radial evolution of the classical gravity action in AdS.

We discuss the time dependence of subsystem entropies in interacting quantum systems. As a model for the time dependence, we suggest that the entropy is as large as possible given two constraints: one follows from the existence of an emergent light cone, and the other is a conjecture associated to the "entanglement velocity" $v_E$. We compare this model to new holographic and spin chain computations, and to an operator growth picture. Finally, we introduce a second way of computing the emergent light cone speed in holographic theories that provides a boundary dynamics explanation for a special case of entanglement wedge subregion duality in AdS/CFT., Comment: v3: error corrected in section 5; v2: small adjustments in the presentation, typos fixed, references added; v1: 25 pages, 10 figures

We study monopole operators at the infrared fixed points of $U(1)$ Chern-Simons-matter theories (QED$_3$, scalar QED$_3$, ${\cal N} =1$ SQED$_3$, and ${\cal N} = 2$ SQED$_3$) with $N$ matter flavors and Chern-Simons level $k$. We work in the limit where both $N$ and $k$ are taken to be large with $\kappa = k/N$ fixed. In this limit, we extract information about the low-lying spectrum of monopole operators from evaluating the $S^2 \times S^1$ partition function in the sector where the $S^2$ is threaded by magnetic flux $4 \pi q$. At leading order in $N$, we find a large number of monopole operators with equal scaling dimensions and a wide range of spins and flavor symmetry irreducible representations. In two simple cases, we deduce how the degeneracy in the scaling dimensions is broken by the $1/N$ corrections. For QED$_3$ at $\kappa=0$, we provide conformal bootstrap evidence that this near-degeneracy is in fact maintained to small values of $N$. For ${\cal N} = 2$ SQED$_3$, we find that the lowest dimension monopole operator is generically non-BPS., Comment: 52 pages plus appendices, 9 figures, v2: minor corrections

Three-dimensional quantum electrodynamics with N charged fermions contains monopole operators that have been studied perturbatively at large N . Here, we initiate the study of these monopole operators in the 4 − ϵ expansion by generalizing them to codimension-3 defect operators in d = 4−ϵ spacetime dimensions. Assuming the infrared dynamics is described by an interacting CFT, we define the “conformal weight” of these operators in terms of the free energy density on $$ {S}^2\times {\mathrm{\mathbb{H}}}^{2-\upepsilon} $$ in the presence of magnetic flux through the S 2, and calculate this quantity to next-to-leading order in ϵ. Extrapolating the conformal weight to ϵ = 1 gives an estimate of the scaling dimension of the monopole operators in d = 3 that does not rely on the 1/N expansion. We also perform the computation of the conformal weight in the large N expansion for any d and find agreement between the large N and the small ϵ expansions in their overlapping regime of validity.

We compute the entanglement and R\'enyi entropy growth after a global quench in various dimensions in free scalar field theory. We study two types of quenches: a boundary state quench and a global mass quench. Both of these quenches are investigated for a strip geometry in 1, 2, and 3 spatial dimensions, and for a spherical geometry in 2 and 3 spatial dimensions. We compare the numerical results for massless free scalars in these geometries with the predictions of the analytical quasiparticle model based on EPR pairs, and find excellent agreement in the limit of large region sizes. At subleading order in the region size, we observe an anomalous logarithmic growth of entanglement coming from the zero mode of the scalar., Comment: v2: references added, minor improvements; v1: 32 pages, 9 figures

In this note we describe a discrete dynamical system acting on the similarity classes of a plane convex body within the affine class of the body. We find invariant elements in all affine classes, and describe the orbits of bodies in some special classes. We point out applications with abrasion processes of pebble shapes., Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures

We study how the universal contribution to entanglement entropy in a conformal field theory depends on the entangling region. We show that for a deformed sphere the variation of the universal contribution is quadratic in the deformation amplitude. We generalize these results for R\'enyi entropies. We obtain an explicit expression for the second order variation of entanglement entropy in the case of a deformed circle in a three dimensional CFT with a gravity dual. For the same system, we also consider an elliptic entangling region and determine numerically the entanglement entropy as a function of the aspect ratio of the ellipse. Based on these three-dimensional results and Solodukhin's formula in four dimensions, we conjecture that the sphere minimizes the universal contribution to entanglement entropy in all dimensions., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures; v3: minor typos fixed v2: presentation of Renyi entropy results modified, ref added

We consider several types of quantum critical phenomena from finite-density gauge-gravity duality which to different degrees lie outside the Landau-Ginsburg-Wilson paradigm. These include: (i) a ``bifurcating'' critical point, for which the order parameter remains gapped at the critical point, and thus is not driven by soft order parameter fluctuations. Rather it appears to be driven by ``confinement'' which arises when two fixed points annihilate and lose conformality. On the condensed side, there is an infinite tower of condensed states and the nonlinear response of the tower exhibits an infinite spiral structure; (ii) a ``hybridized'' critical point which can be described by a standard Landau-Ginsburg sector of order parameter fluctuations hybridized with a strongly coupled sector; (iii) a ``marginal'' critical point which is obtained by tuning the above two critical points to occur together and whose bosonic fluctuation spectrum coincides with that postulated to underly the ``Marginal Fermi Liquid'' description of the optimally doped cuprates.

We investigate causality constraints on the time evolution of entanglement entropy after a global quench in relativistic theories. We first provide a general proof that the so-called tsunami velocity is bounded by the speed of light. We then generalize the free particle streaming model of [1] to general dimensions and to an arbitrary entanglement pattern of the initial state. In more than two spacetime dimensions the spread of entanglement in these models is highly sensitive to the initial entanglement pattern, but we are able to prove an upper bound on the normalized rate of growth of entanglement entropy, and hence the tsunami velocity. The bound is smaller than what one gets for quenches in holographic theories, which highlights the importance of interactions in the spread of entanglement in many-body systems. We propose an interacting model which we believe provides an upper bound on the spread of entanglement for interacting relativistic theories. In two spacetime dimensions with multiple intervals, this model and its variations are able to reproduce intricate results exhibited by holographic theories for a significant part of the parameter space. For higher dimensions, the model bounds the tsunami velocity at the speed of light. Finally, we construct a geometric model for entanglement propagation based on a tensor network construction for global quenches., United States. Dept. of Energy (cooperative research agreement DE-FG0205ER41360), Princeton Center for Theoretical Science

In this paper we continue the study of renormalized entanglement entropy introduced in [1]. In particular, we investigate its behavior near an IR fixed point using holographic duality. We develop techniques which, for any static holographic geometry, enable us to extract the large radius expansion of the entanglement entropy for a spherical region. We show that for both a sphere and a strip, the approach of the renormalized entanglement entropy to the IR fixed point value contains a contribution that depends on the whole RG trajectory. Such a contribution is dominant, when the leading irrelevant operator is sufficiently irrelevant. For a spherical region such terms can be anticipated from a geometric expansion, while for a strip whether these terms have geometric origins remains to be seen., United States. Dept. of Energy (Cooperative Research Agreement DE-FG0205ER41360), Simons Foundation

We introduce a "renormalized entanglement entropy" which is intrinsically UV finite and is most sensitive to the degrees of freedom at the scale of the size R of the entangled region. We illustrated the power of this construction by showing that the qualitative behavior of the entanglement entropy for a non-Fermi liquid can be obtained by simple dimensional analysis. We argue that the functional dependence of the "renormalized entanglement entropy" on R can be interpreted as describing the renormalization group flow of the entanglement entropy with distance scale. The corresponding quantity for a spherical region in the vacuum, has some particularly interesting properties. For a conformal field theory, it reduces to the previously proposed central charge in all dimensions, and for a general quantum field theory, it interpolates between the central charges of the UV and IR fixed points as R is varied from zero to infinity. We conjecture that in three (spacetime) dimensions, it is always non-negative and monotonic, and provides a measure of the number of degrees of freedom of a system at scale R. In four dimensions, however, we find examples in which it is neither monotonic nor non-negative., 54 pages, v2: Discussion of Renyi entropies and citations added, typos corrected

Gauge/gravity duality applied to strongly interacting systems at finite density predicts a universal intermediate energy phase to which we refer as a semi-local quantum liquid. Such a phase is characterized by a finite spatial correlation length, but an infinite correlation time and associated nontrivial scaling behavior in the time direction, as well as a nonzero entropy density. For a holographic system at a nonzero chemical potential, this unstable phase sets in at an energy scale of order of the chemical potential, and orders at lower energies into other phases; examples include superconductors, and antiferromagnetic-type states. In this paper we give examples in which it also orders into Fermi liquids of “heavy” fermions. While the precise nature of the lower energy state depends on the specific dynamics of the individual system, we argue that the semi-local quantum liquid emerges universally at intermediate energies through deconfinement (or equivalently fractionalization). We also discuss the possible relevance of such a semi-local quantum liquid to heavy electron systems and the strange metal phase of high temperature cuprate superconductors., United States. Dept. of Energy (Cooperative Research Agreement DE-FG0205ER41360)

In these lecture notes we review some recent attempts at searching for non-Fermi liquids and novel quantum phase transitions in holographic systems using gauge/gravity duality. We do this by studying the simplest finite density system arising from the duality, obtained by turning on a nonzero chemical potential for a U(1) global symmetry of a CFT, and described on the gravity side by a charged black hole. We address the following questions of such a finite density system: 1. Does the system have a Fermi surface? What are the properties of low energy excitations near the Fermi surface? 2. Does the system have an instability to condensation of scalar operators? What is the critical behavior near the corresponding quantum critical point? We find interesting parallels with those of high T_c cuprates and heavy electron systems. Playing a crucial role in our discussion is a universal intermediate-energy phase, called a "semi-local quantum liquid", which underlies the non-Fermi liquid and novel quantum critical behavior of a system. It also provides a novel mechanism for the emergence of lower energy states such as a Fermi liquid or a superconductor., Comment: 70 pages. Based on lectures given by Hong Liu

Spherically symmetric gravitationally bound, oscillating scalar lumps (boson stars and oscillatons) are considered in Einstein's gravity coupled to massive scalar fields in 1+D dimensional de Sitter-type inflationary space-times. We show that due to inflation bosons stars and oscillatons lose mass through scalar radiation, but at a rate that is exponentially small when the expansion rate is slow., Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures

We study a holographic model realizing an "antiferromagnetic" phase in which a global SU(2) symmetry representing spin is broken down to a U(1) by the presence of a finite electric charge density. This involves the condensation of a neutral scalar field in a charged AdS black hole. We observe that the phase transition for both neutral and charged (as in the standard holographic superconductor) order parameters can be driven to zero temperature by a tuning of the UV conformal dimension of the order parameter, resulting in a quantum phase transition of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless type. We also characterize the antiferromagnetic phase and an externally forced ferromagnetic phase by showing that they contain the expected spin waves with linear and quadratic dispersions respectively., 24 pages; v2: references added, typos corrected

Spherically symmetric oscillatons (also referred to as oscillating soliton stars) i.e. gravitationally bound oscillating scalar lumps are considered in theories containing a massive self-interacting real scalar field coupled to Einstein's gravity in 1+D dimensional spacetimes. Oscillations are known to decay by emitting scalar radiation with a characteristic time scale which is, however, extremely long, it can be comparable even to the lifetime of our universe. In the limit when the central density (or amplitude) of the oscillaton tends to zero (small-amplitude limit) a method is introduced to compute the transcendentally small amplitude of the outgoing waves. The results are illustrated in detail on the simplest case, a single massive free scalar field coupled to gravity., Comment: 23 pages, 2 figures, references on oscillons added, version to appear in Phys. Rev. D

The radiation loss of small amplitude oscillons (very long-living, spatially localized, time dependent solutions) in one dimensional scalar field theories is computed in the small-amplitude expansion analytically using matched asymptotic series expansions and Borel summation. The amplitude of the radiation is beyond all orders in perturbation theory and the method used has been developed by Segur and Kruskal in Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 747 (1987). Our results are in good agreement with those of long time numerical simulations of oscillons., 22 pages, 9 figures

The radiation loss of small-amplitude radially symmetric oscillons (long-living, spatially localized, time-dependent solutions) in two- and three-dimensional scalar field theories is computed analytically in the small-amplitude expansion. The amplitude of the radiation is beyond all orders in perturbation theory and it is determined using matched asymptotic series expansions and Borel summation. The general results are illustrated on the case of the two- and three-dimensional sine-Gordon theory and a two-dimensional $\phi^6$ model. The analytic predictions are found to be in good agreement with the results of numerical simulations of oscillons., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures