Transition to chaos in extended systems and their quantum impurity models

Abstract Chaos sets a fundamental limit to quantum-information processing schemes. We study the onset of chaos in spatially extended quantum many-body systems that are relevant to quantum optical devices. We consider an extended version of the Tavis–Cummings model on a finite chain. By studying level-spacing statistics, adjacent gap ratios, and spectral form factors, we observe the transition from integrability to chaos as the hopping between the Tavis–Cummings sites is increased above a finite value. The results are obtained by means of exact numerical diagonalization which becomes notoriously hard for extended lattice geometries. In an attempt to circumvent these difficulties, we identify a minimal single-site quantum impurity model that successfully captures the spectral properties of the lattice model. This approach is intended to be adaptable to other lattice models with large local Hilbert spaces.