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arXiv:1305.2817 · Physical Review E

Absence of exponential sensitivity to small perturbations in nonintegrable systems of spins 1/2

Boris V. Fine, Tarek A. Elsayed, Chahan M. Kropf, Astrid Silvia de Wijn

Published Jan 31, 2014• 69 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We show that macroscopic nonintegrable lattices of spins 1/2, which are often considered to be chaotic, do not exhibit the basic property of classical chaotic systems, namely, exponential sensitivity to small perturbations. We compare chaotic lattices of classical spins and nonintegrable lattices of spins 1/2 in terms of their magnetization responses to an imperfect reversal of spin dynamics known as Loschmidt echo. In the classical case, magnetization is exponentially sensitive to small perturbations with a characteristic exponent equal to twice the value of the largest Lyapunov exponent of the system. In the case of spins 1/2, magnetization is only power-law sensitive to small perturbations.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.89.012923

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We show that macroscopic nonintegrable lattices of spins 1/2, which are often considered to be chaotic, do not exhibit the basic property of classical chaotic systems, namely, exponential sensitivity to small perturbations. We compare chaotic lattices of classical spins and nonintegrable lattices of spins 1/2 in terms of their magnetization responses to an imperfect reversal of spin dynamics known as Loschmidt echo. In the classical case, magnetization is exponentially sensitive to small perturbations with a characteristic exponent equal to twice the value of the largest Lyapunov exponent of the system. In the case of spins 1/2, magnetization is only power-law sensitive to small perturbations.
We investigate the sensitivity of nonintegrable large-spin quantum lattices to small perturbations with a particular focus on the time reversal experiments known in statistical physics as 'Loschmidt echoes' and in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) as 'magic echoes.' Our numerical simulations of quantum spin- clusters indicate that there is a regime where Loschmidt echoes exhibit nearly exponential sensitivity to small perturbations with characteristic constant approximately equal to twice the value of the largest Lyapunov exponent of the corresponding classical spin clusters. The above theoretical results are verifiable by NMR experiments on solids containing large-spin nuclei.
Classical chaotic dynamics is characterized by exponential sensitivity to initial conditions. Quantum mechanics, however, does not show this feature. We consider instead the sensitivity of quantum evolution to perturbations in the Hamiltonian. This is observed as an attenuation of the Loschmidt echo M(t), i.e., the amount of the original state (wave packet of width sigma) which is recovered after a time reversed evolution, in the presence of a classically weak perturbation. By considering a Lorentz gas of size L, which for large L is a model for an unbounded classically chaotic system, we find numerical evidence that, if the perturbation is within a certain range, M(t) decays exponentially with a rate 1/tau(phi) determined by the Lyapunov exponent lambda of the corresponding classical dynamics. This exponential decay extends much beyond the Eherenfest time t(E) and saturates at a time t(s) approximately equal to lambda(-1)ln[N], where N approximately (L/sigma)(2) is the effective dimensionality of the Hilbert space. Since tau(phi) quantifies the increasing uncontrollability of the quantum phase (decoherence) its characterization and control has fundamental interest.
We address the time decay of the Loschmidt echo, measuring the sensitivity of quantum dynamics to small Hamiltonian perturbations, in one-dimensional integrable systems. Using a semiclassical analysis, we show that the Loschmidt echo may exhibit a well-pronounced regime of exponential decay, similar to the one typically observed in quantum systems whose dynamics is chaotic in the classical limit. We derive an explicit formula for the exponential decay rate in terms of the spectral properties of the unperturbed and perturbed Hamilton operators and the initial state. In particular, we show that the decay rate, unlike in the case of the chaotic dynamics, is directly proportional to the strength of the Hamiltonian perturbation. Finally, we compare our analytical predictions against the results of a numerical computation of the Loschmidt echo for a quantum particle moving inside a one-dimensional box with Dirichlet-Robin boundary conditions, and find the two in good agreement.
The problems of chaos and relaxation have a fundamental importance in the study of many-body classical and quantum systems. We investigate some of the issues related to these problems numerically in classical and quantum spin systems. New results reported in this thesis include: (i) A remarkably simple algorithm for discriminating chaotic from nonchaotic behavior in classical systems using a time series of one macroscopic observable. The effectiveness of this algorithm stems from the qualitative differences in the power spectra of chaotic and nonchaotic systems. (ii) A modified version of the Onsager regression relation applicable to pure quantum states. (iii) An efficient algorithm for computing the infinitetemperature time correlation functions in systems with large Hilbert spaces. (iv) Absence of exponential sensitivity to small perturbations in macroscopic nonintegrable systems of spins 1/2 . Such a behavior is contrasted with the exponential sensitivity to small perturbations in chaotic classical spin systems. (v) Accurate numerical investigations of free induction decay and spin diffusion in certain spin lattices. The consequences of these results have implications for the foundations of statistical mechanics or practical problems such as computing the long-time behavior of the free induction decay in solids.
The concept of irreversibility is necessary to justify the statistical description of many-body systems. Here, the authors study the dynamics of observable echoes in quantum many-body systems occurring when the time-evolution is effectively inverted. For nonintegrable systems they find that small imperfections in the time-reversal procedure that alter the state of the system lead to exponentially decaying echoes. As the corresponding decay rate is largely independent of the strength of the perturbation, an intrinsic sensitivity to the perturbation is revealed. This implies irreversibility of the dynamics for all practical purposes, similar to the situation in chaotic classical systems.