Revealing nonperturbative effects in the SYK model

Understand

We study the large $N$ saddle points of two SYK chains coupled by an interaction that is nonlocal in Euclidean time.

• We start from analytic treatment of the free case with $q=2$ and perform the numerical study of the interacting case $q=4$.
• We show that in both cases there is a nontrivial phase structure with infinite number of phases.
• Every phase correspond to a saddle point in the non-interacting two-replica SYK.