Traveling discontinuity at the quantum butterfly front

Abstract

We formulate a kinetic theory of quantum information scrambling in the context of a paradigmatic model of interacting electrons in the vicinity of a superconducting phase transition. We carefully derive a set of coupled partial differential equations that effectively govern the dynamics of information spreading in generic dimensions. They exhibit traveling wave solutions that are discontinuous at the boundary of the light cone, and have a perfectly causal structure where the solutions do not spill outside of the light cone.Comment: 31 pages, 7 figure