Divergences in the rate of complexification

Abstract

It is conjectured that the average energy provides an upper bound on the rate at which the complexity of a holographic boundary state grows. In this paper, we perturb a holographic CFT by a relevant operator with a time-dependent coupling, and study the complexity of the time-dependent state using the complexity equals action and the complexity equals volume conjectures. We find that the rate of complexification according to both of these conjectures has UV divergences, whereas the instantaneous energy is UV finite. This implies that neither the complexity equals action nor complexity equals volume conjecture is consistent with the conjectured bound on the rate of complexification.