Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Cambridge University Press eBooks

Statistical methods and ‘quantum chaology’

J P Connerade

Published May 7, 1998• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Introduction A system is considered as chaotic in classical mechanics if the orbits, instead of remaining confined to a specific region, invade the whole of available phase space. A simple example is a pendulumn with a magnet below the bob: if a sheet of paper is placed between the magnet and the bob and a pen is attached, the pendulumn will write all over the page within the range accessible to it. More exactly, if we examine phase space, it will seem completely disordered, with interwoven tracks throughout its volume. If we magnify the volume, the disorder will persist, and so on ad infinitum no matter how great the magnification, because classical mechanics imposes no limit on the resolution which can be achieved. Chaotic behaviour can arise in any system whose motion is described by a nonlinear differential equation. Whether or not it is prevalent depends on the details of the problem, but it is a general theorem that any system described by a nonlinear differential equation possesses some chaotic regime. In quantum mechanics, by contrast, chaos does not occur. We may see this in several ways. First, note that we cannot magnify ad infinitum the volume to be analysed in phase space: eventually, we reach the elementary volume ħ 3 within which trajectories lose their meaning. Another way of reaching the same conclusion is to note that any Schrödinger type equation is linear: its solutions obey the superposition theorem. Under these circumstances genuine chaos is excluded by fundamental principles.

DOI
10.1017/cbo9780511524516.011

Related papers

Introduction

R. Blümel, William P. Reinhardt

By now the “chaos revolution” has reached nearly every branch of the natural sciences. In fact, chaos is everywhere. To name but a few examples, we talk about chaotic weather patterns, chaotic chemical reactions and the chaotic evolution of insect populations. Atomic and molecular physics are no exceptions. At first glance this is surprising since atoms and molecules are well described by the linear laws of quantum mechanics, while an essential ingredient of chaos is nonlinearity in the dynamic equations. Thus, chaos and atomic physics seem to have little to do with each other. But recently, atomic and molecular physicists have pushed the limits of their experiments to such high quantum numbers that it starts to make sense, in the spirit of Bohr's correspondence principle, to compare the results of atomic physics experiments with the predictions of classical mechanics, which, for the most part, show complexity and chaos. The most striking observation in recent years has been that quantum systems seem to “know” whether their classical counterparts display regular or chaotic motion. This fact can be understood intuitively on the basis of Feynman's version of quantum mechanics. In 1948 Feynman showed that quantum mechanics can be formulated on the basis of classical mechanics with the help of path integrals. Therefore it is expected that the quantum mechanics of an atom or molecule is profoundly influenced, but of course not completely determined, by the qualitative behaviour of its underlying classical mechanics.

Cambridge University Press eBooks•Jul 24, 1997•0 citations

An Introduction to Quantum Chaos

Mason Alexander Porter

Nonlinear dynamics (``chaos theory'') and quantum mechanics are two of the scientific triumphs of the 20th century. The former lies at the heart of the modern interdisciplinary approach to science, whereas the latter has revolutionized physics. Both chaos theory and quantum mechanics have achieved a fairly large level of glamour in the eyes of the general public. The study of quantum chaos encompasses the application of dynamical systems theory in the quantum regime. In the present article, we give a brief review of the origin and fundamentals of both quantum mechanics and nonlinear dynamics. We recount the birth of dynamical systems theory and contrast chaotic motion with integrable motion. We similarly recall the transition from classical to quantum mechanics and discuss the origin of the latter. We then consider the interplay between nonlinear dynamics and quantum mechanics via a classification and explanation of the three types of quantum chaos. We include several recent results in this discussion.

arXiv:nlin/0107039•Jul 17, 2001•3 citations

We discuss the solutions of quantum problems which are nonlinear in the classical limit. It is shown that in this case it is necessary to solve the corresponding nonlinear classical problem and study its bifurcation properties.

K. N. Yugai

Dynamical chaos in quantum systems (quantum chaos) has been studied by a large number of physicists [1-7]. It has been shown that quantum chaos is possible only in the quasiclassical region, for example in the case of quantum states near the dissociation limit in molecules or near the ionization limit in atoms and molecules. However, the quantum equations of motion are linear and hence they cannot contain dynamical chaos. In the present paper we discuss the solution of quantum problems which are nonlinear in the classical limit. It will be show that in solving the quantum problem in this case it is necessary to use the solution of the nonlinear classical problem forming the classical limit of the quantum problem. i. We note first that here we are not interested in the usual field nonlinearities considered, for example, in quantum optics. This is because field nonlinearities cannot determine the bifurcation properties of the quantum equations of motion since the latter are linear in the wave function ~ or density matrix p. In other words, dynamical chaos, which is intimately connected with the bifurcation properties of the corresponding equations, is not determined by nonlinearities in the fields in quantum equations of motion linear in ~ or 0o

•Jan 1, 1993•0 citations

The Emergence of Chaos in Quantum Mechanics

Emilio Fiordilino

Nonlinearity in Quantum Mechanics may have extrinsic or intrinsic origins and is a liable route to a chaotic behaviour that can be of difficult observations. In this paper, we propose two forms of nonlinear Hamiltonian, which explicitly depend upon the phase of the wave function and produce chaotic behaviour. To speed up the slow manifestation of chaotic effects, a resonant laser field assisting the time evolution of the systems causes cumulative effects that might be revealed, at least in principle. The nonlinear Schrödinger equation is solved within the two-state approximation; the solution displays features with characteristics similar to those found in chaotic Classical Mechanics: sensitivity on the initial state, dense power spectrum, irregular filling of the Poincaré map and exponential separation of the trajectories of the Bloch vector σ in the Bloch sphere.

Symmetry•May 8, 2020•5 citations

Applications of the Decoherence Formalism

Todd A. Brun

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.

•Mar 16, 2009•4 citations

Causal Wave Mechanics and the Advent of Complexity. II. Dynamic uncertainty in quantum systems and the correspondence principle

Andrei P. Kirilyuk

The intrinsic multivaluedness of interaction process, revealed in Part I of this series of papers, is interpreted as the origin of the true dynamical (in particular, quantum) chaos. The latter is causally deduced as unceasing series of transitions, dynamically probabilistic by their origin, between the equally real, but incompatible 'realisations' (modes of interaction) of a system. The obtained set of realisations form the causally derived, intrinsically complete "space of events" providing the crucial extension of the notion of probability and the method of its first-principle calculation. The fundamental dynamic uncertainty thus revealed is specified for Hamiltonian quantum systems and applied to quantum chaos description in periodically perturbed systems. The ordinary semiclassical transition in our quantum-mechanical results leads to exact reproduction of the main features of chaotic behaviour of the system known from classical mechanics, which permits one to "re-establish" the correspondence principle for chaotic systems (inevitably lost in any their conventional, single-valued description). The causal dynamical randomness in the extended quantum mechanics is not restricted, however, to semiclassical conditions and generically occurs also in essentially quantum regimes, even though partial "quantum suppression of chaos" does exist and is specified in our description, as well as other particular types of the quantum (truly) chaotic behaviour.

arXiv:quant-ph/9511035•Nov 23, 1995•0 citations
Introduction A system is considered as chaotic in classical mechanics if the orbits, instead of remaining confined to a specific region, invade the whole of available phase space. A simple example is a pendulumn with a magnet below the bob: if a sheet of paper is placed between the magnet and the bob and a pen is attached, the pendulumn will write all over the page within the range accessible to it. More exactly, if we examine phase space, it will seem completely disordered, with interwoven tracks throughout its volume. If we magnify the volume, the disorder will persist, and so on ad infinitum no matter how great the magnification, because classical mechanics imposes no limit on the resolution which can be achieved. Chaotic behaviour can arise in any system whose motion is described by a nonlinear differential equation. Whether or not it is prevalent depends on the details of the problem, but it is a general theorem that any system described by a nonlinear differential equation possesses some chaotic regime. In quantum mechanics, by contrast, chaos does not occur. We may see this in several ways. First, note that we cannot magnify ad infinitum the volume to be analysed in phase space: eventually, we reach the elementary volume ħ 3 within which trajectories lose their meaning. Another way of reaching the same conclusion is to note that any Schrödinger type equation is linear: its solutions obey the superposition theorem. Under these circumstances genuine chaos is excluded by fundamental principles.
By now the “chaos revolution” has reached nearly every branch of the natural sciences. In fact, chaos is everywhere. To name but a few examples, we talk about chaotic weather patterns, chaotic chemical reactions and the chaotic evolution of insect populations. Atomic and molecular physics are no exceptions. At first glance this is surprising since atoms and molecules are well described by the linear laws of quantum mechanics, while an essential ingredient of chaos is nonlinearity in the dynamic equations. Thus, chaos and atomic physics seem to have little to do with each other. But recently, atomic and molecular physicists have pushed the limits of their experiments to such high quantum numbers that it starts to make sense, in the spirit of Bohr's correspondence principle, to compare the results of atomic physics experiments with the predictions of classical mechanics, which, for the most part, show complexity and chaos. The most striking observation in recent years has been that quantum systems seem to “know” whether their classical counterparts display regular or chaotic motion. This fact can be understood intuitively on the basis of Feynman's version of quantum mechanics. In 1948 Feynman showed that quantum mechanics can be formulated on the basis of classical mechanics with the help of path integrals. Therefore it is expected that the quantum mechanics of an atom or molecule is profoundly influenced, but of course not completely determined, by the qualitative behaviour of its underlying classical mechanics.
Nonlinear dynamics (``chaos theory'') and quantum mechanics are two of the scientific triumphs of the 20th century. The former lies at the heart of the modern interdisciplinary approach to science, whereas the latter has revolutionized physics. Both chaos theory and quantum mechanics have achieved a fairly large level of glamour in the eyes of the general public. The study of quantum chaos encompasses the application of dynamical systems theory in the quantum regime. In the present article, we give a brief review of the origin and fundamentals of both quantum mechanics and nonlinear dynamics. We recount the birth of dynamical systems theory and contrast chaotic motion with integrable motion. We similarly recall the transition from classical to quantum mechanics and discuss the origin of the latter. We then consider the interplay between nonlinear dynamics and quantum mechanics via a classification and explanation of the three types of quantum chaos. We include several recent results in this discussion.
Dynamical chaos in quantum systems (quantum chaos) has been studied by a large number of physicists [1-7]. It has been shown that quantum chaos is possible only in the quasiclassical region, for example in the case of quantum states near the dissociation limit in molecules or near the ionization limit in atoms and molecules. However, the quantum equations of motion are linear and hence they cannot contain dynamical chaos. In the present paper we discuss the solution of quantum problems which are nonlinear in the classical limit. It will be show that in solving the quantum problem in this case it is necessary to use the solution of the nonlinear classical problem forming the classical limit of the quantum problem. i. We note first that here we are not interested in the usual field nonlinearities considered, for example, in quantum optics. This is because field nonlinearities cannot determine the bifurcation properties of the quantum equations of motion since the latter are linear in the wave function ~ or density matrix p. In other words, dynamical chaos, which is intimately connected with the bifurcation properties of the corresponding equations, is not determined by nonlinearities in the fields in quantum equations of motion linear in ~ or 0o
Nonlinearity in Quantum Mechanics may have extrinsic or intrinsic origins and is a liable route to a chaotic behaviour that can be of difficult observations. In this paper, we propose two forms of nonlinear Hamiltonian, which explicitly depend upon the phase of the wave function and produce chaotic behaviour. To speed up the slow manifestation of chaotic effects, a resonant laser field assisting the time evolution of the systems causes cumulative effects that might be revealed, at least in principle. The nonlinear Schrödinger equation is solved within the two-state approximation; the solution displays features with characteristics similar to those found in chaotic Classical Mechanics: sensitivity on the initial state, dense power spectrum, irregular filling of the Poincaré map and exponential separation of the trajectories of the Bloch vector σ in the Bloch sphere.
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.
The intrinsic multivaluedness of interaction process, revealed in Part I of this series of papers, is interpreted as the origin of the true dynamical (in particular, quantum) chaos. The latter is causally deduced as unceasing series of transitions, dynamically probabilistic by their origin, between the equally real, but incompatible 'realisations' (modes of interaction) of a system. The obtained set of realisations form the causally derived, intrinsically complete "space of events" providing the crucial extension of the notion of probability and the method of its first-principle calculation. The fundamental dynamic uncertainty thus revealed is specified for Hamiltonian quantum systems and applied to quantum chaos description in periodically perturbed systems. The ordinary semiclassical transition in our quantum-mechanical results leads to exact reproduction of the main features of chaotic behaviour of the system known from classical mechanics, which permits one to "re-establish" the correspondence principle for chaotic systems (inevitably lost in any their conventional, single-valued description). The causal dynamical randomness in the extended quantum mechanics is not restricted, however, to semiclassical conditions and generically occurs also in essentially quantum regimes, even though partial "quantum suppression of chaos" does exist and is specified in our description, as well as other particular types of the quantum (truly) chaotic behaviour.