Spatiotemporal spread of perturbations in power-law models at low temperatures: Exact results for classical out-of-time-order correlators

Out-of-time-ordered correlator in the one-dimensional Kuramoto-Sivashinsky and Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equations

The out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) has emerged as an interesting object in both classical and quantum systems for probing the spatial spread and temporal growth of initially local perturbations in spatially extended chaotic systems. Here, we study the (classical) OTOC and its "light cone" in the nonlinear Kuramoto-Sivashinsky (KS) equation, using extensive numerical simulations. We also show that the linearized KS equation exhibits a qualitatively similar OTOC and light cone, which can be understood via a saddle-point analysis of the linearly unstable modes. Given the deep connection between the KS (deterministic) and the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ, which is stochastic) equations, we also explore the OTOC in the KPZ equation. While our numerical results in the KS case are expected to hold in the continuum limit, for the KPZ case it is valid in a discretized version of the KPZ equation. More broadly, our work unravels the intrinsic interplay between noise/instability, nonlinearity, and dissipation in partial differential equations (deterministic or stochastic) through the lens of OTOC.

Out-of-equilibrium dynamics of repulsive ranked diffusions: The expanding crystal

We study the nonequilibrium Langevin dynamics of N particles in one dimension with Coulomb repulsive linear interactions. This is a dynamical version of the so-called jellium model (without confinement) also known as ranked diffusion. Using a mapping to the Lieb-Liniger model of quantum bosons, we obtain an exact formula for the joint distribution of the positions of the N particles at time t, all starting from the origin. A saddle-point analysis shows that the system converges at long time to a linearly expanding crystal. Properly rescaled, this dynamical state resembles the equilibrium crystal in a time-dependent effective quadratic potential. This analogy allows us to study the fluctuations around the perfect crystal, which, to leading order, are Gaussian. There are however deviations from this Gaussian behavior, which embody long-range correlations of purely dynamical origin, characterized by the higher-order cumulants of, e.g., the gaps between the particles, which we calculate exactly. We complement these results using a recent approach by one of us in terms of a noisy Burgers equation. In the large-N limit, the mean density of the gas can be obtained at any time from the solution of a deterministic viscous Burgers equation. This approach provides a quantitative description of the dense regime at shorter times. Our predictions are in good agreement with numerical simulations for finite and large N.

Dynamical fluctuations in the Riesz gas

We consider an infinite system of particles on a line performing identical Brownian motions and interacting through the |x-y|^{-s} Riesz potential, causing the overdamped motion of particles. We investigate fluctuations of the integrated current and the position of a tagged particle. We show that for 0<s<1, the standard deviations of both quantities grow as t^{s/2(1+s)}. When s>1, the interactions are effectively short-ranged, and the universal subdiffusive t^{1/4} growth emerges with only amplitude depending on the exponent s. We also show that the two-time correlations of the tagged-particle position have the same form as for fractional Brownian motion.

Dynamical regimes of finite-temperature discrete nonlinear Schrödinger chain

We show that the one-dimensional discrete nonlinear Schrödinger chain (DNLS) at finite temperature has three different dynamical regimes (ultralow-, low-, and high-temperature regimes). This has been established via (i) one-point macroscopic thermodynamic observables (temperature T, energy density ε, and the relationship between them), (ii) emergence and disappearance of an additional almost conserved quantity (total phase difference), and (iii) classical out-of-time-ordered correlators and related quantities (butterfly speed and Lyapunov exponents). The crossover temperatures T_{l-ul} (between low- and ultra-low-temperature regimes) and T_{h-l} (between the high- and low-temperature regimes) extracted from these three different approaches are consistent with each other. The analysis presented here is an important step forward toward the understanding of DNLS which is ubiquitous in many fields and has a nonseparable Hamiltonian form. Our work also shows that the different methods used here can serve as important tools to identify dynamical regimes in other interacting many-body systems.