Physical Review A
Systematic corrections to the rotating-wave approximation and quantum chaos
Ronald F. Fox, John C. Eidson
Abstract
Quantum chaos has been demonstrated in several studies of the interaction between N two-level quantum systems and a single-mode radiation field interacting in a resonant cavity. It has been shown that the mechanism for this chaos is dynamically identical to a periodically perturbed, near-separatrix motion of a pendulum. Identification of this mechanism followed from examination of the rotating-wave approximation and corrections to this approximation. Our earlier study established the nature of the corrections on the basis of numerical simulation experiments and heuristic arguments. In this paper we invoke an averaging procedure which enables us to systematically establish the form of these corrections. We first apply this procedure to the Rabi model in order to illustrate its utility and exhibit its structure, and then we apply it to the more complicated problem of quantum chaos.