Complexity, scaling, and a phase transition

TL;DR

This paper explores how holographic complexity behaves in certain conformal field theories with a compactified dimension and a Wilson line, revealing a scaling law and its relation to a phase transition.

Contribution

It demonstrates that complexity functionals follow a specific scaling relation and proposes this law applies broadly to CFTs on a circle, linking complexity to phase transitions.

Findings

Complexity acts as an order parameter for the confinement-deconfinement transition.

Proposed complexity functionals obey a universal scaling law with the circle's radius.

The scaling law likely applies to a wide class of conformal field theories on a circle.

Abstract

We investigate the holographic complexity of CFTs compactified on a circle with a Wilson line, dual to magnetized solitons in AdS$_4$ and AdS$_5$. These theories have a confinement-deconfinement phase transition as a function of the Wilson line, and the complexity of formation acts as an order parameter for this transition. Through explicit calculation, we show that proposed complexity functionals based on volume and action obey a scaling relation with radius of the circle and further prove that a broad family of potential complexity functionals obeys this scaling behavior. As a result, we conjecture that the scaling law applies to the complexity of conformal field theories on a circle in more general circumstances.