Correlation functions for open strings and chaos

A bstract We study the holographic interpretation of the bulk instability, i.e. the bulk Lyapunov exponent in the motion of open classical bosonic strings in AdS black hole/brane/string backgrounds. In the vicinity of homogeneous and isotropic horizons the bulk Lyapunov exponent saturates the MSS chaos bound but in fact has nothing to do with chaos as our string configurations live in an integrable sector. In the D1-D5-p black string background, the bulk Lyapunov exponent is deformed away from the MSS value both by the rotation (the infrared deformation) and the existence of an asymptotically flat region (the ultraviolet deformation). The dynamics is still integrable and has nothing to do with chaos (either in gravity or in field theory). Instead, the bulk Lyapunov scale captures the imaginary part of quasinormal mode frequencies. Therefore, the meaning of the bulk chaos is that it determines the thermal decay rate due to the coupling to the heat bath, i.e. the horizon.