Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and thermalization on the boundary of many-body localized fermionic symmetry-protected topological states

The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model is a quantum mechanical model for randomly interaction fermions in a quantum dot. This paper studies the properties of the many-body spectrum of the SYK model and finds a periodicity of the spectral properties in term of the number of fermion modes in the quantum dot. In particular, the level statistics of SYK spectrum are investigated. It is found that the many-body level spacing of the SYK model follows Wigner-Dyson statistics, consistent with the thermalizing nature of the SYK model. Interestingly, the level statistics goes through those of different random matrix ensembles periodically. The periodicity can be explained by viewing the SYK model as an effective model for the boundary of 1D interacting fermionic symmetry-protected topological states. The periodicity in the SYK spectrum is therefore tied to the classification of fermionic topological states in one dimension.