Non-Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser (KAM) systems, when perturbed by weak time-dependent fields, offer a fast route to classical chaos through an abrupt breaking of invariant phase-space tori. In this work, we employ out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) to study the dynamical sensitivity of a perturbed non-KAM system in the quantum limit as the parameter that characterizes the resonance condition is slowly varied. For this purpose, we consider a quantized kicked harmonic oscillator (KHO) model, which displays stochastic webs resembling Arnold's diffusion that facilitate large-scale diffusion in the phase space. Although the Lyapunov exponent of the KHO at resonances remains close to zero in the weak perturbative regime, making the system weakly chaotic in the conventional sense, the classical phase space undergoes significant structural changes. Motivated by this, we study the OTOCs when the system is in resonance and contrast the results with the nonresonant case. At resonances, we observe that the long-time dynamics of the OTOCs are sensitive to these structural changes, where they grow quadratically as opposed to linear or stagnant growth at nonresonances. On the other hand, our findings suggest that the short-time dynamics remain relatively more stable and show the exponential growth found in the literature for unstable fixed points. The numerical results are backed by analytical expressions derived for a few special cases. We will then extend our findings concerning the nonresonant cases to a broad class of near-integrable KAM systems.
Non-Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser (KAM) systems, when perturbed by weak time-dependent fields, offer a fast route to classical chaos through an abrupt breaking of invariant phase-space tori. In this work, we employ out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) to study the dynamical sensitivity of a perturbed non-KAM system in the quantum limit as the parameter that characterizes the resonance condition is slowly varied. For this purpose, we consider a quantized kicked harmonic oscillator (KHO) model, which displays stochastic webs resembling Arnold's diffusion that facilitate large-scale diffusion in the phase space. Although the Lyapunov exponent of the KHO at resonances remains close to zero in the weak perturbative regime, making the system weakly chaotic in the conventional sense, the classical phase space undergoes significant structural changes. Motivated by this, we study the OTOCs when the system is in resonance and contrast the results with the nonresonant case. At resonances, we observe that the long-time dynamics of the OTOCs are sensitive to these structural changes, where they grow quadratically as opposed to linear or stagnant growth at nonresonances. On the other hand, our findings suggest that the short-time dynamics remain relatively more stable and show the exponential growth found in the literature for unstable fixed points. The numerical results are backed by analytical expressions derived for a few special cases. We will then extend our findings concerning the nonresonant cases to a broad class of near-integrable KAM systems.
We study operator growth in quantized non-KAM systems using out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs), focusing on the kicked harmonic oscillator as a representative example. Since the classical harmonic oscillator is degenerate, the dynamics fall outside the usual Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser (KAM) framework, and resonances play a central role in shaping the phase space. We examine the system near resonances, where the ratio between the oscillator and driving frequencies takes integer values. Even though the classical Lyapunov exponent remains small at these points, and hence no conventional chaos, the phase space still undergoes strong structural changes. The OTOCs are particularly sensitive to these resonances, with a quadratic-in-time growth at resonance compared to linear growth away from it. Within a perturbative treatment, we derive closed-form expressions for the OTOCs and uncover a number-theoretic structure emerging in the behavior of OTOCs, governed by the Euler totient function of the frequency ratio. Overall, the results we present in this short note imply that resonant structures can play an important role in controlling information spreading.
Non-KAM (Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser) systems, when subjected to weak time-dependent perturbations, exhibit an abrupt transition to classical chaos through the breakdown of invariant phase-space tori. We showcase the utilization of non-KAM systems in the quantum regime as quantum sensors, leveraging their sensitivity at \textit{resonances}. Quantum Fisher information (QFI) is a central quantity in quantum parameter estimation theory that measures how much information a quantum state contains about an unknown parameter that is encoded into it. In other words, it quantifies the sensitivity of a quantum state to small changes in that parameter. In this work, through numerical analysis in conjunction with analytical results, we study the performance of the non-KAM systems for quantum sensing applications by computing the QFI. We find that the growth of the QFI is remarkably enhanced when the resonance condition is satisfied. For frequency estimation under Floquet unitary encodings, we derive a transport bound: if the mean excitation number grows as ⟨n^(t)⟩∼tα, the QFI obeys I(t)≲t2α+2. The quantum kicked harmonic oscillator, a paradigmatic non-KAM system, realizes the full hierarchy: localized dynamics (α=0) yield quadratic growth, delocalized diffusion along stochastic webs (α=1) yields quartic growth, and translationally invariant resonances (α=2) saturate the bound with anomalous hexic growth, I(t)∼t6, established analytically at resonance R=2 and numerically at R=4. The enhancement stems from resonance-induced translational symmetry rather than exponential instability, identifying non-KAM resonances as a metrological resource distinct from chaos-assisted and criticality-based sensing.
Understanding quantum chaos is of profound theoretical interest and carries significant implications for various applications, from condensed matter physics to quantum error correction. Recently, out-of-time ordered correlators (OTOCs) have emerged as a powerful tool to quantify quantum chaos. For a given quantum system, the OTOCs measure incompatibility between an operator evolved in the Heisenberg picture and an unevolved operator. In the first part of this thesis, we employ OTOCs to study the dynamical sensitivity of a perturbed non-Komogorov-Arnold-Moser (non-KAM) system in the quantum limit as the parameter that characterizes the resonance condition is slowly varied. For this purpose, we consider a quantized kicked harmonic oscillator (KHO) model that displays stochastic webs in the phase space. The OTOC analysis is followed by a study of quantum Fisher information (QFI) at the resonances and a comparison with the non-resonance cases. We shall show that scaling of the QFI in time is enhanced at the resonances, making the dynamics of the non-KAM systems good candidates for quantum sensing. In the following chapter, we study the OTOCs in a bipartite system of kicked coupled tops with a special focus on the mixed phase space OTOC dynamics. The last part of the thesis is devoted to the study of the emergence of quantum state designs as a signature of quantum chaos and the role of symmetries in this phenomenon. Recently proposed projected ensemble framework utilizes quantum chaos as a resource to construct approximate higher-order state designs. Despite being ubiquitous, the effects of symmetries on the emergence of quantum state designs remain under-explored. We thoroughly investigate this by demonstrating the interplay between symmetries and measurements in constructing approximate state designs. Finally, we outline a few open directions relevant to the current thesis.
Out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) are useful tools for investigating foundational questions such as thermalization in closed quantum systems because they can potentially distinguish between integrable and nonintegrable dynamics. Here, we discuss the properties of wavefronts of OTOCs by focusing on the region around the main wavefront at x=vBt, where vB is the butterfly velocity. Using a Heisenberg spin model as an example, we find that the leading edge of a propagating Gaussian with the argument $\ensuremath{-}m(x){(x\ensuremath{-}{v}_{B}t)}^{2}+b(x)t$ gives an excellent fit to the region around x=vBt for both the free and chaotic cases. However, the scaling in these two regimes is very different: in the free case the coefficients m(x) and b(x) have an inverse power law dependence on x, whereas in the chaotic case they decay exponentially. We conjecture that this result is universal by using catastrophe theory to show that, on the one hand, the wavefront in the free case has to take the form of an Airy function and its local expansion shows that the power law scaling seen in the numerics holds rigorously and, on the other hand, an exponential scaling of the OTOC wavefront must be a signature of nonintegrable dynamics. We find that the crossover between the two regimes is smooth and characterized by an S-shaped curve giving the lifting of Airy nodes as a function of a chaos parameter. This shows that the Airy form is qualitatively stable against weak chaos and consistent with the concept of a quantum Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser theory.
Classical quasi-integrable systems are known to have Lyapunov times much shorter than their ergodicity time, but the situation for their quantum counterparts is less well understood. As a first example, we examine the quantum Lyapunov exponent -- defined by the evolution of the 4-point out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) -- of integrable systems which are weakly perturbed by an external noise, a setting that has proven to be illuminating in the classical case. In analogy to the tangent space in classical systems, we derive a linear superoperator equation which dictates the OTOC dynamics. We find that {\em i)} in the semi-classical limit the quantum Lyapunov exponent is given by the classical one: it scales as ε1/3, with ε being the variance of the random drive, leading to short Lyapunov times compared to the diffusion time (which is ∼ε−1). {\em ii)} in the highly quantal regime the Lyapunov instability is suppressed by quantum fluctuations, and {\em iii)} for sufficiently small perturbations the ε1/3 dependence is also suppressed -- another purely quantum effect which we explain. Several numerical examples which demonstrate the theoretical predictions are given. The implication for the results to the behavior of real near-integrable systems, and for quantum limits on chaos are briefly discussed.
It was proposed recently that the out-of-time-ordered four-point correlator (OTOC) may serve as a useful characteristic of quantum-chaotic behavior, because, in the semiclassical limit ℏ→0, its rate of exponential growth resembles the classical Lyapunov exponent. Here, we calculate the four-point correlator C(t) for the classical and quantum kicked rotor-a textbook driven chaotic system-and compare its growth rate at initial times with the standard definition of the classical Lyapunov exponent. Using both quantum and classical arguments, we show that the OTOC's growth rate and the Lyapunov exponent are, in general, distinct quantities, corresponding to the logarithm of the phase-space averaged divergence rate of classical trajectories and to the phase-space average of the logarithm, respectively. The difference appears to be more pronounced in the regime of low kicking strength K, where no classical chaos exists globally. In this case, the Lyapunov exponent quickly decreases as K→0, while the OTOC's growth rate may decrease much slower, showing a higher sensitivity to small chaotic islands in the phase space. We also show that the quantum correlator as a function of time exhibits a clear singularity at the Ehrenfest time t_{E}: transitioning from a time-independent value of t^{-1}lnC(t) at t<t_{E} to its monotonic decrease with time at t>t_{E}. We note that the underlying physics here is the same as in the theory of weak (dynamical) localization [Aleiner and Larkin, Phys. Rev. B 54, 14423 (1996)PRBMDO0163-182910.1103/PhysRevB.54.14423; Tian, Kamenev, and Larkin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 124101 (2004)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.93.124101] and is due to a delay in the onset of quantum interference effects, which occur sharply at a time of the order of the Ehrenfest time.