Chaotic many-body quantum dynamics, spectral correlations, and energy diffusion
John Chalker (Oxford University)
I will describe a study of chaotic many-body quantum dynamics in a minimal model with spatial structure and local interactions. It has a time-independent Hamiltonian, in contrast to quantum circuits and Brownian models, and is simple at the single-site level, in contrast to Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev chains. It is analytically tractable for large local Hilbert space dimension and weak intersite coupling. In this limit we show that energy dynamics is described by a classical master equation and is diffusive. We also show that the spectral form factor can be expressed exactly in terms of the solution to this master equation.
Joint work with Dominik Hahn, Phys. Rev. X 16, 031076 (2026)