Exact time dependence of causal correlations and nonequilibrium density matrices in holographic systems

We present the first exact calculations of the time dependence of causal correlations in driven nonequilibrium states in (2+1)-dimensional systems using holography. Comparing exact results with those obtained from simple prototype geometries that are parametrized only by a time dependent temperature, we find that the universal slowly varying features are controlled just by the pump duration and the initial and final temperatures only. We provide numerical evidence that the locations of the event and apparent horizons in the dual geometries can be deduced from the nonequilibrium causal correlations without any prior knowledge of the dual gravity theory.Comment: 6 pages + 3 pages supplemental material, 7 figures (colour), v2: corrected typos, changed colour coding in Fig. 1, v3: to be published in PRD, Fig. 3 split into Figs. 3 and 4, Fig. 5 added, extended introductio

Entanglement on linked boundaries in Chern-Simons theory with generic gauge groups

We study the entanglement for a state on linked torus boundaries in $3d$ Chern-Simons theory with a generic gauge group and present the asymptotic bounds of R\'enyi entropy at two different limits: (i) large Chern-Simons coupling $k$, and (ii) large rank $r$ of the gauge group. These results show that the R\'enyi entropies cannot diverge faster than $\ln k$ and $\ln r$, respectively. We focus on torus links $T(2,2n)$ with topological linking number $n$. The R\'enyi entropy for these links shows a periodic structure in $n$ and vanishes whenever $n = 0 \text{ (mod } \textsf{p})$, where the integer $\textsf{p}$ is a function of coupling $k$ and rank $r$. We highlight that the refined Chern-Simons link invariants can remove such a periodic structure in $n$.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figure

Proposal for measuring out-of-time-ordered correlators at finite temperature with coupled spin chains

Information scrambling, which is the spread of local information through a system's many-body degrees of freedom, is an intrinsic feature of many-body dynamics. In quantum systems, the out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) quantifies information scrambling. Motivated by experiments that have measured the OTOC at infinite temperature and a theory proposal to measure the OTOC at finite temperature using the thermofield double state, we describe a protocol to measure the OTOC in a finite temperature spin chain that is realized approximately as one half of the ground state of two moderately-sized coupled spin chains. We consider a spin Hamiltonian with particle-hole symmetry, for which we show that the OTOC can be measured without needing sign-reversal of the Hamiltonian. We describe a protocol to mitigate errors in the estimated OTOC, arising from the finite approximation of the system to the thermofield double state. We show that our protocol is also robust to main sources of decoherence in experiments.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures + References + Appendi