Out-of-time-order correlator in weakly perturbed integrable systems

Abstract

Classical quasi-integrable systems are known to have Lyapunov times much shorter than their ergodicity time, but the situation for their quantum counterparts is less well understood. As a first example, we examine the quantum Lyapunov exponent -- defined by the evolution of the 4-point out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) -- of integrable systems which are weakly perturbed by an external noise, a setting that has proven to be illuminating in the classical case. In analogy to the tangent space in classical systems, we derive a linear superoperator equation which dictates the OTOC dynamics. We find that {\em i)} in the semi-classical limit the quantum Lyapunov exponent is given by the classical one: it scales as $\epsilon^{1/3}$, with $\epsilon$ being the variance of the random drive, leading to short Lyapunov times compared to the diffusion time (which is $\sim \epsilon^{-1}$). {\em ii)} in the highly quantal regime the Lyapunov instability is suppressed by quantum fluctuations, and {\em iii)} for sufficiently small perturbations the $\epsilon^{1/3}$ dependence is also suppressed -- another purely quantum effect which we explain. Several numerical examples which demonstrate the theoretical predictions are given. The implication for the results to the behavior of real near-integrable systems, and for quantum limits on chaos are briefly discussed.