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Bounding the Space of Holographic CFTs with Chaos

6 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

6 Pith papers citing it
abstract

Thermal states of quantum systems with many degrees of freedom are subject to a bound on the rate of onset of chaos, including a bound on the Lyapunov exponent, $\lambda_L\leq 2\pi /\beta$. We harness this bound to constrain the space of putative holographic CFTs and their would-be dual theories of AdS gravity. First, by studying out-of-time-order four-point functions, we discuss how $\lambda_L=2\pi/\beta$ in ordinary two-dimensional holographic CFTs is related to properties of the OPE at strong coupling. We then rule out the existence of unitary, sparse two-dimensional CFTs with large central charge and a set of higher spin currents of bounded spin; this implies the inconsistency of weakly coupled AdS$_3$ higher spin gravities without infinite towers of gauge fields, such as the $SL(N)$ theories. This fits naturally with the structure of higher-dimensional gravity, where finite towers of higher spin fields lead to acausality. On the other hand, unitary CFTs with classical $W_{\infty}[\lambda]$ symmetry, dual to 3D Vasiliev or hs[$\lambda$] higher spin gravities, do not violate the chaos bound, instead exhibiting no chaos: $\lambda_L=0$. Independently, we show that such theories violate unitarity for $|\lambda|>2$. These results encourage a tensionless string theory interpretation of the 3D Vasiliev theory. We also perform some CFT calculations of chaos in Rindler space in various dimensions.

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2026 3 2025 3

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UNVERDICTED 6

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representative citing papers

Entanglement Revivals and Scrambling for Evaporating Black Holes

hep-th · 2026-04-29 · unverdicted · novelty 7.0 · 2 refs

Increasing black hole scrambling time in JT and RST evaporating geometries suppresses and eliminates late-time entanglement revivals in 2d CFT mutual information for disjoint intervals, interpolating between quasiparticle and maximal scrambling regimes.

Searching for emergent spacetime in spin glasses

hep-th · 2025-10-23 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0

Spectral functions of SYK, p-spin, and SU(M) Heisenberg models show exponential tails in spin-glass phases and quasiparticle families in spin-liquid phases, with a proof that exponential decay blocks detection of bulk causal structure.

Quantum chaos and the holographic principle

quant-ph · 2026-04-14 · unverdicted · novelty 1.0

A review of the chaos-assisted holographic correspondence linking the SYK model to 2D JT gravity, including the need for string theory corrections at fine quantum scales.

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