Scrambling in Two-Dimensional Conformal Field Theories with Light and Smeared Operators

TL;DR

This paper investigates how light intermediate channels and smearing scales influence quantum chaos and scrambling times in two-dimensional conformal field theories, providing precise relations for these effects.

Contribution

It introduces new analytical relations showing how light channels and smearing scales affect scrambling times in 2D CFTs, extending previous large-c Virasoro block analyses.

Findings

Light intermediate channels increase scrambling time.

Smaller smearing length scales decrease scrambling time.

Derived precise relations for these effects.

Abstract

We study quantum chaos in two dimensional conformal field theories, building on the work analyzing the out-of-time order thermal correlation functions using large-c Virasoro blocks. Our work investigates the contribution of light intermediate channels and smearing length scales to the four-point function and scrambling. Precise relations for how light intermediate channels increase the scrambling time and how smearing length scales smaller than the thermal length scale decrease the scrambling time are derived.