We present a Bohmian description of a decaying quantum system. A particle is initially confined in a region around the origin which is surrounded by a repulsive potential barrier. The particle leaks out in time tunneling through the barrier. We determine Bohm trajectories with which we can visualize various features of the decaying system.
Bohmian mechanics is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that describes the motion of quantum particles with an ensemble of deterministic trajectories. Several attempts have been made to utilize Bohmian trajectories as a computational tool to simulate quantum systems consisting of many particles, a very demanding computational task. In this paper, we present a novel ab-initio approach to solve the many-body problem for bosonic systems by evolving a system of one-particle wavefunctions representing pilot waves that guide the Bohmian trajectories of the quantum particles. In this approach, quantum entanglement effects arise due to the interactions between different configurations of Bohmian particles evolving simultaneously. The method is used to study the breathing dynamics and ground state properties in a system of interacting bosons.
By example of the nonlinear Kerr-mode driven by a laser, we show that hysteresis phenomena in systems featuring a driven-dissipative phase transition (DPT) can be accurately described in terms of just two collective, dissipative Liouvillian eigenmodes. The key quantities are just two components of a nonabelian geometric connection, even though a single parameter is driven. This powerful geometric approach considerably simplifies the description of driven-dissipative phase transitions, extending the range of computationally accessible parameter regimes, and providing a new starting point for both experimental studies and analytical insights.
Vortices are known to play a key role in the dynamics of the quantum trajectories defined within the framework of the de Broglie-Bohm formalism of quantum mechanics. It has been rigourously proved that the motion of a vortex in the associated velocity field can induce chaos in these trajectories, and numerical studies have explored the rich variety of behaviors that due to their influence can be observed. In this paper, we go one step further and show how the theory of dynamical systems can be used to construct a general and systematic classification of such dynamical behaviors. This should contribute to establish some firm grounds on which the studies on the intrinsic stochasticity of Bohms quantum trajectories can be based. An application to the two dimensional isotropic harmonic oscillator is presented as an illustration.
Perhaps because of the popularity that trajectory-based methodologies have always had in Chemistry and the important role they have played, Bohmian mechanics has been increasingly accepted within this community, particularly in those areas of the theoretical chemistry based on quantum mechanics, e.g., quantum chemistry, chemical physics, or physical chemistry. From a historical perspective, this evolution is remarkably interesting, particularly when the scarce applications of Madelungs former hydrodynamical formulation, dating back to the late 1960s and the 1970s, are compared with the many different applications available at present. As also happens with classical methodologies, Bohmian trajectories are essentially used to described and analyze the evolution of chemical systems, to design and implement new computational propagation techniques, or a combination of both. In the first case, Bohmian trajectories have the advantage that they avoid invoking typical quantum-classical correspondence to interpret the corresponding phenomenon or process, while in the second case quantum-mechanical effects appear by themselves, without the necessity to include artificially quantization conditions. Rather than providing an exhaustive revision and analysis of all these applications (excellent monographs on the issue are available in the literature for the interested reader, which can be consulted in the bibliography here supplied), this Chapter has been prepared in a way that it may serve the reader to acquire a general view (or impression) on how Bohmian mechanics has permeated the different traditional levels or pathways to approach molecular systems in Chemistry: electronic structure, molecular dynamics and statistical mechanics. This is done with the aid of some illustrative examples -- theoretical developments in some cases and numerical simulations in other cases.
We show how to approximately represent a quantum state using the square root of the usual amount of classical memory. The classical representation of an $n$-qubit state $psi$ consists of its inner products with $O(sqrt{2^n})$ stabilizer states. A quantum state initially specified by its $2^n$ entries in the computational basis can be compressed to this form in time $O(2^n mathrm{poly}(n))$, and, subsequently, the compressed description can be used to additively approximate the expectation value of an arbitrary observable. Our compression scheme directly gives a new protocol for the vector in subspace problem with randomized one-way communication complexity that matches (up to polylogarithmic factors) the optimal upper bound, due to Raz. We obtain an exponential improvement over Razs protocol in terms of computational efficiency.