Amos Chan (University of Oxford)

Spectral statistics in many-body quantum chaotic systems

We study spectral statistics in spatially extended chaotic quantum many-body systems, using simple 1D lattice Floquet models without time-reversal symmetry. Computing the spectral form factor K(t) analytically and numerically, we show that it follows random matrix theory (RMT) at times longer than a many-body Thouless time, t_Th. The t_Th diverges logarithmically with system size and for a large system, two regimes clearly emerge: for t>>t_Th, the spectral form factor agrees with the RMT form.