Slow scrambling and hidden integrability in a random rotor model

Dan Mao, Debanjan Chowdhury, T. Senthil

Published 2019-03-25Version 1

We analyze the out-of-time-order correlation functions of a solvable model of a large number, $N$, of $M$-component quantum rotors coupled by Gaussian-distributed random, infinite-range exchange interactions. We focus on the growth of commutators of operators at a temperature $T$ above the zero temperature quantum critical point separating the spin-glass and paramagnetic phases. In the large $N,~M$ limit, the squared commutators of the rotor fields do not display any exponential growth of commutators, in spite of the absence of any sharp quasiparticle-like excitations in the disorder-averaged theory. We show that in this limit, the problem is integrable and point out interesting connections to random-matrix theory. At leading order in $1/M$, there are no modifications to the critical behavior but an irrelevant term in the fixed-point action leads to a small exponential growth of the squared commutator. We also introduce and comment on a generalized model involving $p$-pair rotor interactions.