Spread complexity and the saturation of wormhole size

Abstract

Recent proposals equate the size of Einstein-Rosen bridges in JT gravity to spread complexity of a dual, double-scaled SYK theory (DSSYK). We show that the auxiliary ``chord basis'' of these proposals is an extrapolation from a sub-exponential part of the finite-dimensional physical Krylov basis of a spreading thermofield double state. The physical tridiagonal Hamiltonian coincides with the DSSYK approximation on the initial Krylov basis, but deviates markedly over an exponentially large part of the state space. We non-perturbatively extend the identification of ER bridge size and spread complexity to the complete Hilbert space, and show that it saturates at late times. We use methods for tridiagonalizing random Hamiltonians to study all universality classes to which large N SYK theories and JT gravities can belong. The saturation dynamics depends on the universality class, and displays ``white hole'' physics at late times where the ER bridge shrinks from maximum size to a plateau. We describe extensions of our results to higher dimensions.