We investigate the quantum dissipative dynamics near the stable states (attractors) of a driven Duffing oscillator. A refined perturbation theory that can treat two perturbative parameters with different orders is developed to calculate the quantum properties of the Duffing oscillator near the attractors. We obtain the perturbative analytical results that go beyond the standard linearization approach for the renormalized level spacings, the orbital displacements, and the effective temperature near the classical attractor. Furthermore, we demonstrate that strong damping induces additional slight renormalization of level spacings and the Bose distribution together with dephasing. Our work provides new insights into the quantum dynamics of the driven Duffing oscillator and offers a theoretical framework that can be applied to related quantum systems near their stable states.
We investigate the quantum dissipative dynamics near the stable states (attractors) of a driven Duffing oscillator. A refined perturbation theory that can treat two perturbative parameters with different orders is developed to calculate the quantum properties of the Duffing oscillator near the attractors. We obtain the perturbative analytical results that go beyond the standard linearization approach for the renormalized level spacings, the orbital displacements, and the effective temperature near the classical attractor. Furthermore, we demonstrate that strong damping induces additional slight renormalization of level spacings and the Bose distribution together with dephasing. Our work provides new insights into the quantum dynamics of the driven Duffing oscillator and offers a theoretical framework that can be applied to related quantum systems near their stable states.
A Josephson junction embedded in a dissipative circuit can be externally driven to induce nonlinear dynamics of its phase. Classically, under sufficiently strong driving and weak damping, dynamic multistability emerges, associated with dynamical bifurcations so that the often-used modeling as a Duffing oscillator, which can exhibit bistability at most, is insufficient. The present work analyzes in this regime corresponding quantum properties by mapping the problem onto a highly nonlinear quasienergy operator in a rotating frame. This allows us to identify in detail parameter regions where simplifications such as the Duffing approximation are valid, to explore classical-quantum correspondences, and to study how quantum fluctuations impact the effective junction parameters as well as the dynamics around higher-amplitude classical fixed points.
We study the quantum dissipative Duffing oscillator across a range of system sizes and environmental couplings under varying semiclassical approximations. Using spatial complexity metrics based on Kullback-Leibler distances between phase-space attractors and temporal complexity metrics based on the Lyapunov exponent, we isolate the effect of the environment on quantum-classical differences. Moreover, we quantify the system sizes where quantum dynamics cannot be simulated using semiclassical or noise-added classical approximations. We find that a remarkable parametrically invariant meta-attractor emerges at a specific length scale and noise-added classical models deviate strongly from quantum dynamics below this scale. We also generalize the previous surprising result that classically regular orbits can have the greatest quantum-classical differences in the semiclassical regime and show that the dynamical growth of quantum-classical differences is not determined by the degree of classical chaos.
In this work the decoherence formalism of quantum mechanics is explored and applied to a number of interesting problems in quantum physics. The boundary between quantum and classical physics is examined, and demonstration made that quantum histories corresponding to classical equations of motion become more probable for a broad class of models, including linear and nonlinear models of Brownian motion. The link between noise, dissipation, and decoherence is studied. This work is then applied to systems which classically exhibit dissipative chaotic dynamics. A theory is explicated for treating these systems, and the ideas are applied to a particular model of the forced, damped Duffing oscillator, which is chaotic for certain parameter values. Differences between classical and quantum chaos are examined, particularly differences arising in the structure of fractal strange attractors, and the conceptual difficulties in framing standard notions of chaos in a quantum system. A brief discussion of previous work on quantum chaos is included, and the differences between Hamiltonian and dissipative chaos pointed out; a somewhat different interpretation of quantum chaos from the standard one is suggested. A class of histories for quantum systems, in phase space rather than configuration space, is studied. Different ways of representing projections in phase space are discussed, and expressions for the probability of phase space histories are derived; conditions for such histories to decohere are also estimated in the semiclassical limit.
In classical mechanics, driven systems with dissipation often exhibit complex, fractal dynamics known as strange attractors. This paper addresses the fundamental question of how such structures manifest in the quantum realm. We investigate the quantum Duffing oscillator, a paradigmatic chaotic system, using the Caldirola-Kanai framework, where dissipation is integrated directly into a time-dependent Hamiltonian. By employing the Husimi distribution to represent the quantum state in phase space, we present the first visualization of a quantum strange attractor within this model. Our simulations demonstrate how an initially simple Gaussian wave packet is stretched, folded, and sculpted by the interplay of chaotic dynamics and energy loss, causing it to localize onto a structure that beautifully mirrors the classical attractor. This quantum "photograph" is inherently smoothed, blurring the infinitely fine fractal details of its classical counterpart as a direct consequence of the uncertainty principle. We supplement this analysis by examining the out-of-time-ordered correlator, which shows that stronger dissipation clarifies the exponential growth associated with the classical Lyapunov exponent, thereby confirming the model's semiclassical behavior. This work offers a compelling geometric perspective on open chaotic quantum systems and sheds new light on the quantum-classical transition.
For the model of a linearly driven quantum anharmonic oscillator, the role of damping is investigated. We compare the position of the stable points in phase space obtained from a classical analysis to the result of a quantum mechanical analysis. The solution of the full master equation shows that the stable points behave qualitatively similar to the classical solution but with small modifications. Both the quantum effects and additional effects of temperature can be described by renormalizing the damping.
Driven nonlinear quantum oscillators are a central platform for quantum technologies, yet their dissipative dynamics are typically described using Lindblad or Caldeira-Leggett master equations derived under assumptions that exclude nonlinearities and driving. Here, we derive a generalized Caldeira-Leggett master equation for driven nonlinear oscillators by retaining the full nonlinear and time-dependent system dynamics in the construction of the dissipator. For position- and momentum-dependent system-bath coupling, the dissipator itself becomes dynamically dressed, generating nonlinear and drive-dependent dissipative channels beyond conventional fixed-dissipator approaches. This produces nonlinear damping together with dissipation-induced corrections to the effective drive. The resulting dissipative dynamics suppress large-amplitude excitations and reduce phase-space fluctuations. For a driven Kerr oscillator, this leads to the suppression of bistability, asymmetric resonance responses, and strongly modified fluctuation distributions. More broadly, our results establish a microscopic framework in which nonlinear dynamics and driving directly reshape the dissipative sector of driven open quantum systems.