Double-Scaled SYK, QCD, and the Flat Space Limit of de Sitter Space

Abstract

A surprising connection exists between double-scaled SYK at infinite temperature, and large N QCD. The large N expansions of the two theories have the same form; the 't Hooft limit of QCD parallels the fixed p limit of SYK (for a theory with p-fermion interactions), and the limit of fixed gauge coupling g -- the flat space limit in AdS/CFT -- parallels the double-scaled limit of SYK. From the holographic perspective fixed g is the far more interesting limit of gauge theory, but very little is known about it. DSSYK allows us to explore it in a more tractable example. The connection is illustrated by perturbative and non-perturbative DSSYK calculations, and comparing the results with known properties of Yang Mills theory. The correspondence is largely independent of the conjectured duality between DSSYK and de Sitter space, but may have a good deal to tell us about it.