Spectral decoupling in many-body quantum chaos

Abstract

We argue that in a large class of disordered quantum many-body systems, the late time dynamics of time-dependent correlation functions is captured by random matrix theory, specifically the energy eigenvalue statistics of the corresponding ensemble of disordered Hamiltonians. We find that late time correlation functions approximately factorize into a time-dependent piece, which only depends on spectral statistics of the Hamiltonian ensemble, and a time-independent piece, which only depends on the data of the constituent operators of the correlation function. We call this phenomenon “spectral decoupling”, which signifies a dynamical onset of random matrix theory in correlation functions. A key diagnostic of spectral decoupling is k-invariance, which we refine and study in detail. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of symmetries, and connections between k-invariance, scrambling, and OTOCs. Disordered Pauli spin systems, as well as the SYK model and its variants, provide a rich source of disordered quantum many-body systems with varied symmetries, and we study k-invariance in these models with a combination of analytics and numerics.