We study the Schwinger-Dyson equations of a fermionic planar matrix quantum mechanics [or tensor and Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models] at leading melonic order. We find two solutions describing a high entropy, SYK black-hole-like phase and a low entropy one with trivial IR behavior. There is a line of first order phase transitions that terminates at a new critical point. Critical exponents are nonmean field and differ on the two sides of the transition. Interesting phenomena are also found in unstable and stable bosonic models, including Kazakov critical points and inconsistency of SYK-like solutions of the IR limit.

We explore in detail properties of two melonic quantum mechanical theories which can be formulated either as fermionic matrix quantum mechanics in the new large D limit, or as disordered models. Both models have a mass parameter m and the transition from the perturbative large m region to the strongly coupled "black-hole" small m region is associated with several interesting phenomena. One model, with UðnÞ 2 symmetry and equivalent to complex Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev, has a line of first-order phase transitions terminating, for a strictly positive temperature, at a critical point having nontrivial, nonmean-field critical exponents for standard thermodynamical quantities. Quasinormal frequencies, as well as Lyapunov exponents associated with out-of-time-ordered four-point functions, are also singular at the critical point, leading to interesting new critical exponents. The other model, with reduced UðnÞ symmetry, has a quantum critical point at strictly zero temperature and positive critical mass m à . For 0 < m < m à , it flows to a new gapless IR fixed point, for which the standard scale invariance is spontaneously broken by the appearance of distinct scaling dimensions Δ þ and Δ − for the Euclidean two-point function when t → þ∞ and t → −∞ respectively. We provide several detailed and pedagogical derivations, including rigorous proofs or simplified arguments for some results that were already known in the literature.

We study holographic subregion volume complexity for a line segment in the AdS 3 Vaidya geometry. On the field theory side, this gravity background corresponds to a sudden quench which leads to the thermalization of the strongly-coupled dual conformal field theory. We find the time-dependent extremal volume surface by numerically solving a partial differential equation with boundary condition given by the Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi surface, and we use this solution to compute holographic subregion complexity as a function of time. Approximate analytical expressions valid at early and at late times are derived.