Princeton University High Energy Theory Seminar

Abstract: Over the past few years various platforms have been proposed to quantum-simulate the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev (SYK) model, a paradigmatic disordered many-body system that admits a holographic dual at low temperatures. A common feature of these proposals is the presence of bosonic mediator modes that generate all-to-all connectivity, at the price of an effectively low-rank interaction structure. In this talk I will review a concrete implementation based on cold atoms in optical cavities, where randomness is engineered via light speckle patterns and the effective rank can be increased using a Trotterization protocol. I will then connect the physics of this realization to that of low-rank SYK models, highlighting known results and presenting preliminary new work. At low energies these models develop a conformal regime that remains maximally chaotic. In a suitable limit they approach \mathcal{N} = 1 supersymmetric SYK models, and I will comment on similarities and differences. At large interaction order p their dynamics is governed by a Liouville equation of motion, as in pure SYK, with an additional auxiliary bosonic field that effectively “monitors” the Liouville dynamics.Based on 2411.17802 and some work in progress.