Most classical dynamical systems are chaotic. The trajectories of two identical systems prepared in infinitesimally different initial conditions diverge exponentially with time. Quantum systems, instead, exhibit quasiperiodicity due to their discrete spectrum. Nonetheless, the dynamics of quantum systems whose classical counterparts are chaotic are expected to show some features that resemble chaotic motion. Among the many controversial aspects of the quantum-classical boundary, the emergence of chaos remains among the least experimentally verified. Time-resolved observations of quantum chaotic dynamics are particularly rare, and as yet unachieved in a single particle, where the subtle interplay between chaos and quantum measurement could be explored at its deepest levels. We present here a realistic proposal to construct a chaotic driven top from the nuclear spin of a single donor atom in silicon, in the presence of a nuclear quadrupole interaction. This system is exquisitely measurable and controllable, and possesses extremely long intrinsic quantum coherence times, allowing for the observation of subtle dynamical behavior over extended periods. We show that signatures of chaos are expected to arise for experimentally realizable parameters of the system, allowing the study of the relation between quantum decoherence and classical chaos, and the observation of dynamical tunneling.
Most classical dynamical systems are chaotic. The trajectories of two identical systems prepared in infinitesimally different initial conditions diverge exponentially with time. Quantum systems, instead, exhibit quasiperiodicity due to their discrete spectrum. Nonetheless, the dynamics of quantum systems whose classical counterparts are chaotic are expected to show some features that resemble chaotic motion. Among the many controversial aspects of the quantum-classical boundary, the emergence of chaos remains among the least experimentally verified. Time-resolved observations of quantum chaotic dynamics are particularly rare, and as yet unachieved in a single particle, where the subtle interplay between chaos and quantum measurement could be explored at its deepest levels. We present here a realistic proposal to construct a chaotic driven top from the nuclear spin of a single donor atom in silicon, in the presence of a nuclear quadrupole interaction. This system is exquisitely measurable and controllable, and possesses extremely long intrinsic quantum coherence times, allowing for the observation of subtle dynamical behavior over extended periods. We show that signatures of chaos are expected to arise for experimentally realizable parameters of the system, allowing the study of the relation between quantum decoherence and classical chaos, and the observation of dynamical tunneling.
We analyze the interplay of chaos, entanglement, and decoherence in a system of qubits whose collective behavior is that of a quantum kicked top. The dynamical entanglement between a single qubit and the rest can be calculated from the mean of the collective spin operators. This allows the possibility of efficiently measuring entanglement dynamics in an experimental setting. We consider a deeply quantum regime and show that signatures of chaos are present in the dynamical entanglement for parameters accessible in an experiment that we propose using cold atoms. The evolution of the entanglement depends on the support of the initial state on regular versus chaotic Floquet eigenstates, whose phase-space distributions are concentrated on the corresponding regular or chaotic eigenstructures. We include the effect of decoherence via a realistic model and show that the signatures of chaos in the entanglement dynamics persist in the presence of decoherence. In addition, the classical chaos affects the decoherence rate itself.
Laser-cooled atoms offer an excellent platform for testing new ideas of quantum control and measurement. I will discuss experiments where we use light and magnetic fields to drive and monitor non-trivial quantum dynamics of a large spin-angular momentum associated with an atomic hyperfine ground state. We can design Hamiltonians to generate arbitrary spin states and perform a full quantum state reconstruction of the results. We have implemented and verified time optimal controls to generate a broad variety of spin states, including spin-squeezed states useful for metrology. Yields achieved are of the range 0.8-0.9.We present a first experimental demonstration of the quantum kicked top, a popular paradigm for quantum and classical chaos. We make `movies' of the evolving quantum state which provides a direct observation of phase space dynamics of this system. The spin dynamics seen in the experiment includes dynamical tunneling between regular islands, rapid spreading of states throughout the chaotic sea, and surprisingly robust signatures of classical phase space structures. Our data show differences between regular and chaotic dynamics in the sensitivity to perturbations of the quantum kicked top Hamiltonian and in the average electron-nuclear spin entanglement during the first 40 kicks. The difference, while clear, is modest due to the small size of the spin.
Quantum chaos, a phenomenon that began to be studied in the last century, still does not have a rigorous understanding. By virtue of the correspondence principle, the properties of the system that lead to chaotic dynamics at the classical level must also be present in the underlying quantum system. In the classical case, the exponential divergence of nearby trajectories in time is described in terms of the Lyapunov exponent. However, in the quantum case, a similar description of chaos is, strictly speaking, impossible due to the absence of trajectories. There are different approaches to remedy this situation, but the universal criterion of quantum chaos is absent. We propose a quantum chaos definition in a manner similar to the classical one using decoherent histories as a quantum analog of trajectories. For this purpose, we consider the model of an open quantum kicked top interacting with the environment, which is a bosonic bath, and illustrate this idea. Here, the environment plays the role of a trajectory-recording device. For the kicked-top model at the classical level, depending on the kick strength, crossover occurs between the integrable and chaotic regimes. We show that for such a model, the production of entropy of decoherent histories is radically different in integrable and chaotic regimes. Thus, the entropy of an ensemble of quantum trajectories can be used as a signature of quantum chaos.
Quantum chaos concerns the emergence of universal statistical and dynamical prop- erties in quantum systems whose classical counterparts exhibit chaotic behavior. Unlike classical chaos, which can be characterized by sensitivity to initial conditions and exponential divergence of trajectories, quantum chaos manifests itself through a variety of indirect diagnostics, including spectral correlations, operator growth, and information scrambling. Understanding how these signatures arise from microscopic dynamics, and how they can be accessed in realistic many-body systems, is a central challenge in modern physics. This thesis investigates quantum chaos from complementary theoretical and practical perspectives. On the theoretical side, it develops effective descriptions of chaotic dy- namics in many-body systems with approximate symmetries, focusing on how weak symmetry breaking controls the exploration of Hilbert space and the crossover to random-matrix universality. Using perturbative arguments, numerical simulations, and a nonlinear sigma-model formulation, we identify a regime of Hilbert-space dif- fusion in which chaotic dynamics unfolds through a slow, collective spreading across nearly decoupled symmetry sectors. On the practical side, the thesis addresses the question of how paradigmatic chaotic models can be realized and probed in controlled experimental platforms. In partic- ular, it explores quantum simulation schemes for Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev (SYK) models using cavity quantum electrodynamics. By employing time-dependent disorder and Trotterized evolution in single-mode optical cavities, we demonstrate how low-rank interactions can be systematically promoted to effective all-to-all randomness, re- producing the spectral and dynamical signatures of SYK physics. Extensions to open-system dynamics are discussed, including Lindbladian realizations and the role of dissipation. The thesis thus highlights the connections between effective descriptions of quantum chaos and their implementation in controlled quantum simulation settings.
Quantum chaotic kicked top model is implemented experimentally in a two-qubit system comprising of a pair of spin-1/2 nuclei using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques. The essential nonlinear interaction was realized using indirect spin-spin coupling, while the linear kicks were realized using radio-frequency pulses. After a variable number of kicks, quantum state tomography was employed to reconstruct the single-qubit reduced density matrices, using which we could extract von Neumann entropies and Husimi distributions. These measures enabled the study of correspondence with classical phase space as well as probing distinct features of quantum chaos, such as symmetries and temporal periodicity in the two-qubit kicked top.
The relationship between chaos and quantum mechanics has been somewhat uneasy--even stormy, in the minds of some people. However, much of the confusion may stem from inappropriate comparisons using formal analyses. In contrast, our starting point here is that a complete dynamical description requires a full understanding of the evolution of measured systems, necessary to explain actual experimental results. This is of course true, both classically and quantum mechanically. Because the evolution of the physical state is now conditioned on measurement results, the dynamics of such systems is intrinsically nonlinear even at the level of distribution functions. Due to this feature, the physically more complete treatment reveals the existence of dynamical regimes--such as chaos--that have no direct counterpart in the linear (unobserved) case. Moreover, this treatment allows for understanding how an effective classical behavior can result from the dynamics of an observed quantum system, both at the level of trajectories as well as distribution functions. Finally, we have the striking prediction that time-series from measured quantum systems can be chaotic far from the classical regime, with Lyapunov exponents differing from their classical values. These predictions can be tested in next-generation experiments.