Quasinormal modes and complexity in saddle-dominated SU(N) spin systems

Abstract We study SU(N) spin systems that mimic the behavior of particles in N-dimensional de Sitter space for N = 2, 3. Their Hamiltonians describe a dynamical system with hyperbolic fixed points, leading to emergent quasinormal modes at the quantum level. These manifest as quasiparticle peaks in the density of states. For a particle in 2-dimensional de Sitter, we find both principal and complementary series densities of states from a PT-symmetric version of the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, having two hyperbolic fixed points in the classical phase space. We then study different spectral and dynamical properties of this class of models, including level spacing statistics, two-point functions, squared commutators, spectral form factor, Krylov operator and state complexity. We find that, even though the early-time properties of these quantities are governed by the saddle points — thereby in some cases mimicking corresponding properties of chaotic systems, a close look at the late-time behavior reveals the integrable nature of the system.