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arXiv:2511.13385 · New Journal of Physics

Diffraction induced quantum chaos in a one-dimensional Bose gas

M. Olshanii, G. Aupetit-Diallo, S. G. Jackson, P. Vignolo, M. Albert

cond-mat.quant-gasquant-phSubmitted Nov 17, 2025• Announced Nov 18, 2025• 0 citations• Revised Mar 6, 2026 (v2)
v1 · Nov 17, 2025v2 · Mar 6, 2026
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Abstract

We investigate the Lieb--Liniger model of interacting one-dimensional bosons coupled to a localized impurity, modeled by a delta barrier. While the Lieb--Liniger gas is integrable, the impurity breaks integrability and induces a transition towards quantum chaos. We show that the low-energy spectrum exhibits random-matrix statistics, in striking contrast to the Bohigas--Giannoni--Schmit conjecture, where chaotic behavior typically emerges at high energy. For two bosons, the odd-parity sector remains integrable, whereas the even-parity sector displays clear signatures of chaos at low energy and a crossover back to quasi-integrable behavior at higher energies. For three bosons, both parity sectors exhibit spectral statistics close to chaos at low energy. We argue that this unconventional form of few-body quantum chaos originates from diffractive processes induced by the impurity.

Journal reference
New J. Phys. 28, 033201 (2026)
DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/ae4774
Comments
16 pages, 11 figures

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We investigate the Lieb--Liniger model of interacting one-dimensional bosons coupled to a localized impurity, modeled by a delta barrier. While the Lieb--Liniger gas is integrable, the impurity breaks integrability and induces a transition towards quantum chaos. We show that the low-energy spectrum exhibits random-matrix statistics, in striking contrast to the Bohigas--Giannoni--Schmit conjecture, where chaotic behavior typically emerges at high energy. For two bosons, the odd-parity sector remains integrable, whereas the even-parity sector displays clear signatures of chaos at low energy and a crossover back to quasi-integrable behavior at higher energies. For three bosons, both parity sectors exhibit spectral statistics close to chaos at low energy. We argue that this unconventional form of few-body quantum chaos originates from diffractive processes induced by the impurity.
We demonstrate that an ultracold many-body bosonic ensemble confined in a one-dimensional double-well potential can exhibit chaotic dynamics due to the presence of a single impurity. The nonequilibrium dynamics is triggered by a quench of the impurity-Bose interaction and is illustrated via the evolution of the population imbalance for the bosons between the two wells. While the increase of the postquench interaction strength always facilitates the irregular motion for the bosonic population imbalance, it becomes regular again when the impurity is initially populated in the highly excited states. Such an integrability to chaos (ITC) transition is fully captured by the transient dynamics of the corresponding linear entanglement entropy, whose infinite-time-averaged value additionally characterizes the edge of the chaos and implies the existence of an effective Bose-Bose attraction induced by the impurity. To elucidate the physical origin for the observed ITC transition, we perform a detailed spectral analysis for the mixture with respect to both the energy spectrum as well as the eigenstates. Specifically, two distinguished spectral behaviors upon a variation of the interspecies interaction strength are observed. While the avoided level crossings take place in the low-energy spectrum, the energy levels in the high-energy spectrum possess a bandlike structure and are equidistant within each band. This leads to a significant delocalization of the low-lying eigenvectors, which, in turn, accounts for the chaotic nature of the bosonic dynamics. By contrast, those highly excited states bear a high resemblance to the noninteracting integrable basis, which explains the recovery of the integrability for the bosonic species. Finally, we discuss the induced Bose-Bose attraction as well as its impact on the bosonic dynamics.
Interacting quantum systems in the chaotic domain are at the core of various ongoing studies of many-body physics, ranging from the scrambling of quantum information to the onset of thermalization. We propose a minimum model for chaos that can be experimentally realized with cold atoms trapped in one-dimensional multi-well potentials. We explore the emergence of chaos as the number of particles is increased, starting with as few as two, and as the number of wells is increased, ranging from a double well to a multi-well Kronig-Penney-like system. In this way, we illuminate the narrow boundary between integrability and chaos in a highly tunable few-body system. We show that the competition between the particle interactions and the periodic structure of the confining potential reveals subtle indications of quantum chaos for 3 particles, while for 4 particles stronger signatures are seen. The analysis is performed for bosonic particles and could also be extended to distinguishable fermions.
By means of full exact diagonalization, we study level statistics and the structure of the eigenvectors of one-dimensional gapless bosonic and fermionic systems across the transition from integrability to quantum chaos. These systems are integrable in the presence of only nearest-neighbor terms, whereas the addition of next-nearest-neighbor hopping and interaction may lead to the onset of chaos. We show that the strength of the next-nearest-neighbor terms required to observe clear signatures of nonintegrability is inversely proportional to the system size. Interestingly, the transition to chaos is also seen to depend on particle statistics, with bosons responding first to the integrability breaking terms. In addition, we discuss the use of delocalization measures as main indicators for the crossover from integrability to chaos and the consequent viability of quantum thermalization in isolated systems.
Interacting quantum systems in the chaotic domain are at the core of various ongoing studies of many-body physics, ranging from the scrambling of quantum information to the onset of thermalization. We propose a minimum model for chaos that can be experimentally realized with cold atoms trapped in one-dimensional multi-well potentials. We explore the emergence of chaos as the number of particles is increased, starting with as few as two, and as the number of wells is increased, ranging from a double well to a multi-well Kronig-Penney-like system. In this way, we illuminate the narrow boundary between integrability and chaos in a highly tunable few-body system. We show that the competition between the particle interactions and the periodic structure of the confining potential reveals subtle indications of quantum chaos for 3 particles, while for 4 particles stronger signatures are seen. The analysis is performed for bosonic particles and could also be extended to distinguishable fermions.
We systematically study the chaotic signatures in a quantum many-body system consisting of an ensemble of interacting two-level atoms coupled to a single-mode bosonic field, the so-called extended Dicke model. The presence of the atom-atom interaction also leads us to explore how the atomic interaction affects the chaotic characters of the model. By analyzing the energy spectral statistics and the structure of eigenstates, we reveal the quantum signatures of chaos in the model and discuss the effect of the atomic interaction. We also investigate the dependence of the boundary of chaos extracted from both eigenvalue-based and eigenstate-based indicators on the atomic interaction. We show that the impact of the atomic interaction on the spectral statistics is stronger than on the structure of eigenstates. Qualitatively, the integrablity-to-chaos transition found in the Dicke model is amplified when the interatomic interaction in the extended Dicke model is switched on.
We study a generic one-dimensonal quantum model of two flavors (pseudospins) chiral complex fermions by exact diagonalization, which can have local interflavor interaction and superconducting pairings (with all irrelevant terms ignored). Analytically, the model has two solvable (integrable) points in the parameter space: it is a free fermion model when the fermion interaction is zero, and is a free boson Luttinger liquid when there is a global U(1)(↑)×^{(\uparrow)}\times(↑)×U(1)(↓)^{(\downarrow)}(↓) symmetry (with nonzero interaction). When the global symmetry of the interacting model is lowered by turning on symmetry breaking parameters, the model undergoes a transition from a quantum integrable model to a fully quantum chaotic model, as we demonstrate by examining the level spacing statistics (LSS) of the many-body energy spectrum. In particular, there is a possibly integrable regime with intermediate global symmetries, where the model is neither free bosons nor free fermions, but shows Poisson LSS in each global symmetry charge sector. This implies the existence of hidden (quasi)local conserved quantities. When the global symmetries are further lowered, the LSS in each charge sector becomes Wigner-Dyson, implying quantum chaos.