Quantum Chaos and the Theory of Measurement

Paolo Facchi A, Saverio Pascazio, Antonello Scardicchio

Arul Lakshminarayan, Jayendra N. Bandyopadhyay, M. S. Santhanam +1 more

Entanglement is a Hilbert-space based measure of nonseparability of states that leads to unique quantum possibilities such as teleportation. It has been at the center of intense activity in the area of quantum information theory and computation. In this paper we discuss the implications of quantum chaos on entanglement, showing how chaos can lead to large entanglement that is universal and describable using random matrix theory. We also indicate how this measure can be used in the Hilbert space formulation of classical mechanics. This leads us to consider purely Hilbert-space based measures of classical chaos, rather than the usual phase-space based ones such as the Lyapunov exponents, and can possibly lead to understanding of partial differential equations and nonintegrable classical field theories.

Lucas Sá, Pedro Ribeiro, Sergey Denisov

Dissipative quantum chaos is an emerging theory that is expected to extend the ideas, concepts, and methodology of conventional Hamiltonian quantum chaos from coherent evolution to open quantum dynamics. The new theory should provide a set of tools to distinguish chaotic open quantum systems from integrable ones, as well as quantitative measures of their chaoticity (or, conversely, integrability). The foundations of this theory were laid in the late 1980s, and from the very start it was clear that, like its Hamiltonian predecessor, it had to be based on the spectral properties of the operators governing open quantum evolution. After these first steps, the field remained relatively quiet for many years and it is only over the last decade that the development of dissipative quantum chaos has received a strong boost, as confirmed by a large number of publications on this topic and, very recently, the first experiments performed to test its theoretical predictions. In this chapter, we review these recent developments and outline the basic foundations of dissipative quantum chaos.

Asher Peres

Jordan Cotler, Felipe Hernández

Chaos in classical systems can be characterized by Lyapunov exponents that measure the exponential divergence of nearby trajectories, but directly extending this framework to quantum mechanics has been a persistent challenge. The wavelike nature of quantum states and the non-commutative geometry of quantum phase space obstruct a straightforward generalization of classical chaos theory. Here we develop a rigorous approach to quantum chaos by leveraging quantum optimal transport theory, which provides the missing geometric foundation for measuring distances between extended quantum distributions. We define quantum Lyapunov exponents that naturally avoid divergences encountered when naïvely generalizing classical exponents, and show that in the semiclassical limit they recover the classical global expansion rate, and hence the usual maximal Lyapunov exponent when they coincide. Our framework provides a tight connection between the divergence of classical trajectories and semiclassical phase space evolution, and additionally clarifies the role of out-of-time-order correlators as diagnostics of quantum chaos. These results establish quantum optimal transport as a unifying mathematical foundation for quantum chaos theory, providing new tools to characterize dynamical behavior across the full range of quantum dynamics from simple few-body models to complex many-body systems.