Complexity Growth in Integrable and Chaotic Models

TL;DR

This paper investigates the growth and truncation of complexity in integrable and chaotic quantum models using geodesic analysis on the unitary group, revealing different behaviors and bounds in free, integrable, and chaotic systems.

Contribution

It introduces a geometric framework to analyze complexity growth, identifies conjugate points as truncation signals, and compares complexity bounds across free, integrable, and chaotic models.

Findings

Complexity grows linearly initially in all models.

Conjugate points cause complexity growth truncation at polynomial or exponential times.

Chaotic models exhibit complexity growth up to exponential times without early conjugate points.

Abstract

We use the SYK family of models with $N$ Majorana fermions to study the complexity of time evolution, formulated as the shortest geodesic length on the unitary group manifold between the identity and the time evolution operator, in free, integrable, and chaotic systems. Initially, the shortest geodesic follows the time evolution trajectory, and hence complexity grows linearly in time. We study how this linear growth is eventually truncated by the appearance and accumulation of conjugate points, which signal the presence of shorter geodesics intersecting the time evolution trajectory. By explicitly locating such "shortcuts" through analytical and numerical methods, we demonstrate that: (a) in the free theory, time evolution encounters conjugate points at a polynomial time; consequently complexity growth truncates at $O(\sqrt{N})$, and we find an explicit operator which "fast-forwards" the free $N$-fermion time evolution with this complexity, (b) in a class of interacting integrable theories, the complexity is upper bounded by $O({\rm poly}(N))$, and (c) in chaotic theories, we argue that conjugate points do not occur until exponential times $O(e^N)$, after which it becomes possible to find infinitesimally nearby geodesics which approximate the time evolution operator. Finally, we explore the notion of eigenstate complexity in free, integrable, and chaotic models.