We demonstrate the emergence of quantum-chaotic dynamics in a quasiperiodically driven impact oscillator near the grazing condition. While previous studies of the quantum impact oscillator under periodic driving reported strange nonchaotic dynamics, we show that quasiperiodic driving produces robust signatures of chaos. The corresponding classical system undergoes a sharp grazing-induced transition from quasiperiodic motion to chaos, as established by bifurcation analysis, Lyapunov exponents, Fourier spectra, and the 0-1 test. In the quantum system, Shannon-entropy time series exhibit broadband spectra, 0-1 test values close to unity, and predominantly positive finite-time Lyapunov exponents for both rational and irrational driving-frequency ratios. Independent quantum diagnostics reinforce this result: the out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) displays early-time exponential growth with nearly identical rates, while the golden-ratio drive leads to a substantially faster saturation of the OTOC. Fidelity exhibits an exponential decay regime that is approximately independent of perturbation strength. These results establish quasiperiodic driving near grazing as a mechanism for generating quantum-chaotic behavior and reveal that, although the initial onset of scrambling is largely insensitive to frequency-ratio rationality, the subsequent development of global scrambling is strongly influenced by the degree of irrationality of the drive.
We demonstrate the emergence of quantum-chaotic dynamics in a quasiperiodically driven impact oscillator near the grazing condition. While previous studies of the quantum impact oscillator under periodic driving reported strange nonchaotic dynamics, we show that quasiperiodic driving produces robust signatures of chaos. The corresponding classical system undergoes a sharp grazing-induced transition from quasiperiodic motion to chaos, as established by bifurcation analysis, Lyapunov exponents, Fourier spectra, and the 0-1 test. In the quantum system, Shannon-entropy time series exhibit broadband spectra, 0-1 test values close to unity, and predominantly positive finite-time Lyapunov exponents for both rational and irrational driving-frequency ratios. Independent quantum diagnostics reinforce this result: the out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) displays early-time exponential growth with nearly identical rates, while the golden-ratio drive leads to a substantially faster saturation of the OTOC. Fidelity exhibits an exponential decay regime that is approximately independent of perturbation strength. These results establish quasiperiodic driving near grazing as a mechanism for generating quantum-chaotic behavior and reveal that, although the initial onset of scrambling is largely insensitive to frequency-ratio rationality, the subsequent development of global scrambling is strongly influenced by the degree of irrationality of the drive.
Dynamical chaos in a periodically driven, dissipative soft impact oscillator is investigated in the quantum regime using the complex-number quantum Langevin equation (c-number QLE). The averaged system dynamics are analyzed through a comprehensive suite of time-series diagnostics, including bifurcation diagrams, Lyapunov exponents, Fourier spectra, and the 0-1 test. Systematic variation of the wall position reveals a rich sequence of dynamical transitions and grazing bifurcations, progressing from periodic to multiperiodic motion and culminating in chaotic behavior. These results demonstrate the persistence of impact-induced chaos under quantum dissipation and elucidate how environmental fluctuations influence non-linear dynamics in open quantum systems.
The majority of classical dynamical systems are chaotic and exhibit the butterfly effect: a minute change in initial conditions has exponentially large effects later on. But this phenomenon is difficult to reconcile with quantum mechanics. One of the main goals in the field of quantum chaos is to establish a correspondence between the dynamics of classical chaotic systems and their quantum counterparts. In isolated systems in the absence of decoherence, there is such a correspondence in dynamics, but it usually persists only over a short time window, after which quantum interference washes out classical chaos. We demonstrate that quantum mechanics can also play the opposite role and generate exponential instabilities in classically nonchaotic systems within this early-time window. Our calculations employ the out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC)-a diagnostic that reduces to the Lyapunov exponent in the classical limit but is well defined for general quantum systems. We show that certain classically nonchaotic models, such as polygonal billiards, demonstrate a Lyapunov-like exponential growth of the OTOC at early times with Planck's-constant-dependent rates. This behavior is sharply contrasted with the slow early-time growth of the analog of the OTOC in the systems' classical counterparts. These results suggest that classical-to-quantum correspondence in dynamics is violated in the OTOC even before quantum interference develops.
Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) have proven to be a useful tool for studying thermalization in quantum systems. In particular, the exponential growth of OTOCS, or scrambling, is sometimes taken as an indicator of chaos in quantum systems, despite the fact that saddle points in integrable systems can also drive rapid growth in OTOCs. By analyzing the Dicke model and a driven Bose-Hubbard dimer, we demonstrate that the OTOC growth driven by chaos can, nonetheless, be distinguished from that driven by saddle points through the long-term behavior. Besides quantitative differences in the long-term average, the saddle point gives rise to large oscillations not observed in the chaotic case. The differences are also highlighted by entanglement entropy, which in the chaotic-driven dimer matches a Page curve prediction. These results illustrate additional markers that can be used to distinguish chaotic behavior in quantum systems, beyond the initial exponential growth in OTOCs.
We study two classes of quantum phenomena associated with classical chaos in a variety of quantum models: (i) dynamical localization and its extension and generalization to interacting few- and many-body systems and (ii) quantum exponential divergences in high-order correlators and other diagnostics of quantum chaos. Dynamical localization (DL) is a subtle phenomenon related to Anderson localization. It hinges on quantum interference and is typically destroyed in presence of interactions. DL often manifests as a failure of a driven system to heat up, violating the foundations of statistical physics. Kicked rotor (KR) is a prototypical chaotic classical model that exhibits linear energy growth with time. The quantum kicked rotor (QKR) features DL instead: its energy saturates. Multiple attempts of many-body generalizations faced difficulties in preserving DL. Recently, DL was shown in a special integrable many-body model. We study non-integrable models of few- and many-body QKR-like systems and provide direct evidence that DL can persist there. In addition, we show how a novel related concept of localization landscape can be applied to study transport in rippled channels. Out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) was proposed as an indicator of quantum chaos, since in the semiclassical limit, this correlator's possible exponential growth rate (CGR) resembles the classical Lyapunov exponent (LE). We show that the CGR in QKR is related, but distinct from the LE in KR. We also show a singularity in the OTOC at the Ehrenfest time tᴱ due to a delay in the onset of quantum interference. Next, we study scaling of OTOC beyond tᴱ. We then explore how the OTOC-based approach to quantum chaos relates to the random-matrix-theoretical description by introducing an operator we dub the Lyapunovian. Its level statistics is calculated for quantum stadium billiard, a seminal model of quantum chaos, and aligns perfectly with the Wigner-Dyson surmise. In the semiclassical limit, the Lyapunovian reduces to the matrix of uncorrelated finite-time Lyapunov exponents, connecting the CGR at early times, when the quantum effects are weak, to universal level repulsion that hinges on strong quantum interference. Finally, we consider quantum polygonal billiards: their classical counterparts are non-chaotic. We show exponential growth of the OTOCs in these systems, sharply contrasted with the classical behavior even before quantum interference develops.
Fast scrambling, quantified by the exponential initial growth of out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs), is the ability to efficiently spread quantum correlations among the degrees of freedom of interacting systems and constitutes a characteristic signature of local unstable dynamics. As such, it may equally manifest both in systems displaying chaos or in integrable systems around criticality. Here we go beyond these extreme regimes with an exhaustive study of the interplay between local criticality and chaos right at the intricate phase-space region where the integrability-chaos transition first appears. We address systems with a well-defined classical (mean-field) limit, as coupled large spins and Bose-Hubbard chains, thus allowing for semiclassical analysis. Our aim is to investigate the dependence of the exponential growth of the OTOCs, defining the quantum Lyapunov exponent λ_{q} on quantities derived from the classical system with mixed phase space, specifically the local stability exponent of a fixed point λ_{loc} as well as the maximal Lyapunov exponent λ_{L} of the chaotic region around it. By extensive numerical simulations covering a wide range of parameters we give support to a conjectured linear dependence 2λ_{q}=aλ_{L}+bλ_{loc}, providing a simple route to characterize scrambling at the border between chaos and integrability.
Out-of-Time-Ordered Commutators (OTOCs), representing a key diagnostic for scrambling as a facet of short-time quantum chaos, have attracted wide-ranging interest, from many-body physics to quantum gravity. By means of a suitable form of the Wigner-Moyal expansion, and invoking ensemble equivalence in statistical physics, we provide a consistent approach to the growth rate of the OTOC for many-body systems with chaotic classical limit where both the classical Lyapunov exponent and the quantum nature of the density of states enter. Applying this construction to quantized high-dimensional hyperbolic motion, i.e., a quantum chaotic system that exhibits gravity-like correlation functions in the late-time regime, we compute the OTOC growth rate Λ as a function of the number of degrees of freedom, f, and inverse temperature, β.
We show that the scaled growth rate, Λ/f, can be described by a universal function of fβ and displays a cross-over from classical to quantum behavior as we increase f and/or lower the temperature. In the deep quantum regime of infinite f, we find maximally fast scrambling in the sense of the Maldacena-Shenker-Stanford bound on chaos. This elucidates the non-perturbative mechanism underlying the saturation of the bound via quantum contributions to the mean density of states, and it provides further support for this dynamical system as a dual to two-dimensional quantum gravity. In this way, we present first evidence of maximally fast scrambling in a quantum chaotic system with a well-defined classical Hamiltonian limit, without invoking any external mechanism such as (disorder) averaging.