Research project is (co) funded by the Slovenian Research Agency.
UL Member: Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
Code: N1-0245
Project: Quantum chaos in relativistic plasmas
Period: 1. 1. 2023 - 31. 12. 2024
Range per year: 0,8 FTE, category: B
Head: Sašo Grozdanov
Research activity: Natural sciences and mathematics
Research Organisations, Researchers and Citations for bibliographic records
Project description:
Collective transport in macroscopic states of matter such as liquids and highly energetic plasmas is driven by the microscopic quantum chaotic motion of particles and molecules. The dynamics of these fundamental constituents is governed by a quantum field theory (QFT) that is characterised by the strength of its interactions. After a century of striking advance in QFTs, our theoretical understanding remains mostly limited to weakly interacting systems where perturbative methods permit us to compute physical observables. Recently, however, string theory has also enabled explorations of strongly interacting theories through holographic duality, which allows us to study strong interactions by performing a dual gravitational analysis involving the well-established laws of black holes.
The goals of Q-CHIRP are to define, quantify and classify quantum chaos in many-body QFTs, and to understand the elusive relation between chaos and emergent collective transport (hydrodynamics, thermalisation, relaxation). The objectives of Q-CHIRP are divided into three parts ([O1]–[O3]), all synthesising known methodologies and developing new ones to analyse weakly and strongly interacting theories through perturbative methods and holography, as well as through concepts from the theory of classical chaos and ergodic and information theory. [O1] will formulate and investigate probes of quantum chaos, focusing on dynamical entropy. [O2] will study the precise analytic relations between these chaos observables and transport. [O3] will investigate the mathematical structure of transport and chaos observables. The three objectives may result in new foundational insights into physics as well as in novel experimentally testable predictions for the dynamics of the quark-gluon plasma — a state of matter that filled the early Universe and can now be recreated in particle accelerators.
