Out-of-Time-Order correlators in driven conformal field theories

Understand

We compute Out-of-Time-Order correlators (OTOCs) for conformal field theories (CFTs) subjected to either continuous or discrete periodic drive protocols.

• This is achieved by an appropriate analytic continuation of the stroboscopic time.
• After detailing the general structure, we perform explicit calculations in large-$c$ CFTs where we find that OTOCs display an exponential, an oscillatory and a power-law behaviour in the heating phase, the non-heating phase and on the phase boundary, respectively.
• In contrast to this, for the Ising CFT representing an integrable model, OTOCs never display such exponential growth.