No Arabic abstract
We study how the interaction with an external incoherent environment induces a crossover from quantum to classical behavior for a particle whose classical motion is chaotic. Posing the problem in the semiclassical regime, we find that noise produced by the bath coupling rather than dissipation is primarily responsible for the dephasing that results in the ``classicalization of the particle. We find that the bath directly alters the phase space structures that signal the onset of classical chaos. This dephasing is shown to have a semiclassical interpretation: the noise renders the interfering paths indistinguishable and therefore incoherent. The noise is also shown to contribute to the quantum inhibition of mixing by creating new paths that interfere coherently.
The prediction of the response of a closed system to external perturbations is one of the central problems in quantum mechanics, and in this respect, the local density of states (LDOS) provides an in- depth description of such a response. The LDOS is the distribution of the overlaps squared connecting the set of eigenfunctions with the perturbed one. Here, we show that in the case of closed systems with classically chaotic dynamics, the LDOS is a Breit-Wigner distribution under very general perturbations of arbitrary high intensity. Consequently, we derive a semiclassical expression for the width of the LDOS which is shown to be very accurate for paradigmatic systems of quantum chaos. This Letter demonstrates the universal response of quantum systems with classically chaotic dynamics.
We study the classical dynamics in a generic first-order quantum phase transition between the U(5) and SU(3) limits of the interacting boson model. The dynamics is chaotic, of Henon-Heiles type, in the spherical phase and is regular, yet sensitive to local degeneracies, in the deformed phase. Both types of dynamics persist in the coexistence region resulting in a divided phase space.
Semiclassical methods can now explain many mesoscopic effects (shot-noise, conductance fluctuations, etc) in clean chaotic systems, such as chaotic quantum dots. In the deep classical limit (wavelength much less than system size) the Ehrenfest time (the time for a wavepacket to spread to a classical size) plays a crucial role, and random matrix theory (RMT) ceases to apply to the transport properties of open chaotic systems. Here we summarize some of our recent results for shot-noise (intrinsically quantum noise in the current through the system) in this deep classical limit. For systems with perfect coupling to the leads, we use a phase-space basis on the leads to show that the transmission eigenvalues are all 0 or 1 -- so transmission is noiseless [Whitney-Jacquod, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 116801 (2005), Jacquod-Whitney, Phys. Rev. B 73, 195115 (2006)]. For systems with tunnel-barriers on the leads we use trajectory-based semiclassics to extract universal (but non-RMT) shot-noise results for the classical regime [Whitney, Phys. Rev. B 75, 235404 (2007)].
We consider a quasi one-dimensional chain of N chaotic scattering elements with periodic boundary conditions. The classical dynamics of this system is dominated by diffusion. The quantum theory, on the other hand, depends crucially on whether the chain is disordered or invariant under lattice translations. In the disordered case, the spectrum is dominated by Anderson localization whereas in the periodic case, the spectrum is arranged in bands. We investigate the special features in the spectral statistics for a periodic chain. For finite N, we define spectral form factors involving correlations both for identical and non-identical Bloch numbers. The short-time regime is treated within the semiclassical approximation, where the spectral form factor can be expressed in terms of a coarse-grained classical propagator which obeys a diffusion equation with periodic boundary conditions. In the long-time regime, the form factor decays algebraically towards an asymptotic constant. In the limit $Ntoinfty$, we derive a universal scaling function for the form factor. The theory is supported by numerical results for quasi one-dimensional periodic chains of coupled Sinai billiards.
Chaos is ubiquitous in physical systems. The associated sensitivity to initial conditions is a significant obstacle in forecasting the weather and other geophysical fluid flows. Data assimilation is the process whereby the uncertainty in initial conditions is reduced by the astute combination of model predictions and real-time data. This chapter reviews recent findings from investigations on the impact of chaos on data assimilation methods: for the Kalman filter and smoother in linear systems, analytic results are derived; for their ensemble-bas