Fast scramblers

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Published 15 October 2008 • Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd
, , Citation Yasuhiro Sekino and L. Susskind JHEP10(2008)065 DOI 10.1088/1126-6708/2008/10/065

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Author affiliations

1 Okayama Institute for Quantum Physics, Okayama 700-0015, Japan

2 Physics Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4060, U.S.A.

Dates

  1. Received 16 September 2008
  2. Accepted 8 October 2008
  3. Published

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1126-6708/2008/10/065

Abstract

We consider the problem of how fast a quantum system can scramble (thermalize) information, given that the interactions are between bounded clusters of degrees of freedom; pairwise interactions would be an example. Based on previous work, we conjecture:

  1. The most rapid scramblers take a time logarithmic in the number of degrees of freedom.

  2. Matrix quantum mechanics (systems whose degrees of freedom are n byn matrices) saturate the bound.

  3. Black holes are the fastest scramblers in nature.

The conjectures are based on two sources, one from quantum information theory, and the other from the study of black holes in String Theory.

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10.1088/1126-6708/2008/10/065