A chaotic lattice field theory in one dimension*

Abstract

Abstract Motivated by Gutzwiller’s semiclassical quantization, in which unstable periodic orbits of low-dimensional deterministic dynamics serve as a WKB ‘skeleton’ for chaotic quantum mechanics, we construct the corresponding deterministic skeleton for infinite-dimensional lattice-discretized scalar field theories. In the field-theoretical formulation, there is no evolution in time, and there is no ‘Lyapunov horizon’; there is only an enumeration of lattice states that contribute to the theory’s partition sum, each a global spatiotemporal solution of system’s deterministic Euler–Lagrange equations. The reformulation aligns ‘chaos theory’ with the standard solid state, field theory, and statistical mechanics. In a spatiotemporal, crystallographer formulation, the time-periodic orbits of dynamical systems theory are replaced by periodic d-dimensional Bravais cell tilings of spacetime, each weighted by the inverse of its instability, its Hill determinant. Hyperbolic shadowing of large cells by smaller ones ensures that the predictions of the theory are dominated by the smallest Bravais cells. The form of the partition function of a given field theory is determined by the group of its spatiotemporal symmetries, that is, by the space group of its lattice discretization, best studied on its reciprocal lattice. Already one-dimensional lattice discretization is of sufficient interest to be the focus of this paper. In particular, from a spatiotemporal field theory perspective, ‘time’-reversal is a purely crystallographic notion, a reflection point group, leading to a novel, symmetry quotienting perspective of time-reversible theories and associated topological zeta functions.