Spectral form factor for free large $N$ gauge theory and strings

Abstract

We investigate the spectral form factor in two different systems, free large $N$ gauge theories and highly excited string gas. In both cases, after a rapid decay of the spectral form factor at early time, new contributions come in, preventing the spectral form factor from ever becoming exponentially small. We consider $U(N)$ gauge theories with only adjoint matter and compute the spectral form factor using a matrix integral of the thermal holonomy $U$. The new saddles differ from the early time saddle by preserving certain subgroups of the center symmetry. For a gas of strings, the short time decay of the spectral form factor is governed by the continuous Hagedorn density of states, which can be associated to the thermal winding mode with winding number $\pm 1$. We show that the rise of the spectral form factor comes from other winding modes that also carry momentum along the time direction. We speculate on the existence of a family of classical solutions for these string modes, similar to the Horowitz-Polchinski solution. We review a similar problem for black holes. In particular, we examine the Kontsevich-Segal criterion on complex black holes that contribute to the spectral form factor. In the canonical ensemble quantity $Z(\beta +it)$, the black hole becomes unallowed at $t\sim \mathcal{O}(\beta )$. A way to avoid this is to consider the microcanonical ensemble, where the black hole stays allowable.

arXiv comment36 pages, 15 figures. v2: added references. v3: matched published version

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