Thermal diffusivity and butterfly velocity in anisotropic Q-Lattice models

Abstract

By using a holographic method we study a relation between the thermal diffusivity ($D_T$) and two quantum chaotic properties, Lyapunov time ($\tau_L$) and butterfly velocity ($v_B$) in strongly correlated systems. It has been shown that $D_T/(v_B^2 \tau_L)$ is universal in some holographic models as well as condensed matter systems including the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models. We investigate to what extent this relation is universal in the Q-lattice models with infrared (IR) scaling geometry, focusing on the effect of spatial anisotropy. Indeed it was shown that $\mathcal{E}_i := D_{T,i}/(v_{B,i}^2 \tau_L)$ ($i=x,y$) is determined only by some scaling exponents of the IR metric in the low temperature limit regardless of the matter fields and ultraviolet data. Inspired by this observation, in this work, we find the concrete expressions for $\mathcal{E}_i$ in terms of the critical dynamical exponents $z_i$ in each direction. By analyzing the IR scaling geometry we identify the allowed scaling parameter regimes, which enable us to compute the allowed range of $\mathcal{E}_i$. We find the lower bound of $\mathcal{E}_i$ is always $1/2$, which is not affected by anisotropy, contrary to the $\eta/s$ case. However, there may be an upper bound determined by anisotropy.