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Physical Review Letters

Chaoticlike Behavior in a Quantum System without Classical Counterpart

Yosef Ashkenazy, Lawrence Paul Horwitz, Jacob Levitan, M. Lewkowicz, Yehuda Rothschild

Published Aug 7, 1995• 29 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present results of an exact computation of the properties of the development of the wave function in the presence of a potential barrier in a bounded well. We find that the complex behavior of this evolution, associated with tunneling, is very similar to that expected from a chaotic dynamical system.
DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.75.1070

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We use an one dimensional model of a square barrier embedded in an infinite potential well to demonstrate that tunneling leads to a complex behavior of the wave function and that the degree of complexity may be quantified by use of the spatial entropy function defined by S = -\int |Ψ(x,t)|^2 ln |Ψ(x,t)|^2 dx. There is no classical counterpart to tunneling, but a decrease in the tunneling in a short time interval may be interpreted as an approach of a quantum system to a classical system. We show that changing the square barrier by increasing the height/width do not only decrease the tunneling but also slows down the rapid rise of the entropy function, indicating that the entropy growth is an essentially quantum effect.
It is demonstrated in the context of the simple one-dimensional example of a barrier in an infinite well that highly complex behavior of the time evolution of a wave function is associated with the near degeneracy of levels in the process of tunneling. Degenerate conditions are obtained by shifting the position of the barrier. The complexity strength depends on the number of almost degenerate levels which depend on geometrical symmetry. The presence of complex behavior is studied to establish correlation with spectral degeneracy.
We describe a quantum many-body system undergoing multiple resonant tunneling which exhibits chaotic behavior in numerical simulations of a mean field approximation. This phenomenon, which has no counterpart in the classical limit, is due to effective nonlinearities in the tunneling process and can be observed in principle within a heterostructure. 03.65.-w, 05.45.+b, 73.40.Gk Typeset using REVT E X In current studies the problem of quantum chaos is usually posed in the following terms. We are given a system which exhibits chaotic behavior classically: does this property survive quantization? Typically one studies the spectrum of the quantum mechanical Hamiltonian operator. However spectral differences at the quantum level between classically integrable and chaotic systems do not seem to imply dramatic differences in the time evolution of the quantum mechanical observables. Relics of classical chaos exist in low dimensional systems in short wavelength or large quantum numbers limits ...
In generic Hamiltonian systems that are neither completely integrable nor fully chaotic, phase space consists of a mixture of regular and chaotic components. In classical dynamics, transitions between different invariant sets in phase space are strictly forbidden, and these sets act as dynamical barriers to one another. In quantum mechanics, in contrast, wave effects allow transitions through such dynamical barriers. This process, known as dynamical tunneling, refers to penetration through dynamical barriers in phase space and was first recognized in the early 1980s. Since then, various aspects of dynamical tunneling have been elucidated, significantly advancing our understanding of such a novel quantum phenomenon. In this article, we provide an overview of several phenomenological perspectives of dynamical tunneling, including chaos-assisted and resonance-assisted tunneling, and also introduce approaches based on classical mechanics extended into the complex domain. In particular, we seek to clarify what is meant by the common claim that "chaos leads to an enhancement of the tunneling probability", which is often made when dynamical tunneling is dressed. We discuss what regime this refers to and, if such an enhancement occurs, what its likely origin is.
Recent numerical experiments of Pecora et al. [Phys. Rev. E 83, 065201 (2011)] have investigated tunneling between two-dimensional symmetric double wells separated by a tunneling barrier. The wells were bounded by hard walls and by the potential barrier which was created by a step increase from the zero potential within a well to a uniform barrier potential within the barrier region, which is a situation potentially realizable in the context of quantum dots. Numerical results for the splitting of energy levels between symmetric and antisymmetric eigenstates were calculated. It was found that the splittings vary erratically from state to state, and the statistics of these variations were studied for different well shapes with the fluctuation levels being much less in chaotic wells than in comparable nonchaotic wells. Here we develop a quantitative theory for the statistics of the energy level splittings for chaotic wells. Our theory is based on the random plane wave hypothesis of Berry. While the fluctuation statistics are very different for chaotic and nonchaotic well dynamics, we show that the mean splittings of differently shaped wells, including integrable and chaotic wells, are the same if their well areas and barrier parameters are the same. We also consider the case of tunneling from a single well into a region with outgoing quantum waves.
We solve the Dirac equation in two spatial dimensions in the setting of resonant tunneling, where the system consists of two symmetric cavities connected by a finite potential barrier. The shape of the cavities can be chosen to yield both regular and chaotic dynamics in the classical limit. We find that certain pointer states about classical periodic orbits can exist, which suppress quantum tunneling, and the effect becomes less severe as the underlying classical dynamics in the cavity is chaotic, leading to regularization of tunneling dynamics even in the relativistic quantum regime. Similar phenomena have been observed in graphene. A physical theory is developed to explain the phenomenon based on the spectrum of complex eigenenergies of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian describing the effectively open cavity system.