Confining Backgrounds and Quantum Chaos in Holography

Abstract: Classical world-sheet string theory has recently been shown to be nonintegrable and chaotic in various confining string theory backgrounds -- the AdS soliton background in particular. In this paper we study a minisuperspace quantization of the theory and look at properties of the spectrum like the distribution of level spacing, which are indicative of quantum order or chaos. In the quantum spectrum we find a gradual transition from chaotic (Wigner GOE) to integrable (Poisson) regime as we look at higher energies. This is expected since our system is integrable asymptotically, and at higher energies, the dynamics is entirely dominated by the kinetic terms.