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Physical Review E

Theory of chaos regularization of tunneling in chaotic quantum dots

Ming-Jer Lee, Thomas M. Antonsen, Edward Ott, Louis M. Pecora

Published Nov 21, 2012• 9 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.86.056212

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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.
Quantum tunneling rates through a barrier separating two-dimensional, symmetric, double-well potentials are shown to depend on the classical dynamics of the billiard trajectories in each well and, hence, on the shape of the wells. For shapes that lead to regular (integrable) classical dynamics the tunneling rates fluctuate greatly with eigenenergies of the states sometimes by over two orders of magnitude. Contrarily, shapes that lead to completely chaotic trajectories lead to tunneling rates whose fluctuations are greatly reduced, a phenomenon we call regularization of tunneling rates. We show that a random-plane-wave theory of tunneling accounts for the mean tunneling rates and the small fluctuation variances for the chaotic systems.
Acknowledgments For two-dimensional, symmetric double well potentials separated by a tunneling barrier, it has been shown theoretically that quantum mechanical tunneling rates are dependent on the shape of the well in the limit of small quantum wavelength. Shapes that support chaotic wave functions produce statistically smaller fluctuations in the tunneling rate than classical (integrable) wells. This effect is called “regularization” of tunneling rates and can be analyzed by examining the splitting in energy level between symmetric and antisymmetric wave functions. Utilizing the similarity in the wave natures of a quantum mechanical particle in a symmetric double well and transverse electromagnetic waves in a 2-D cavity, we investigate chaos regularization in coupled microwave cavities both numerically and experimentally. The difference between the antisymmetric and symmetric eigenstate frequencies squared and evanescent electromagnetic wave propagation in a cutoff tunnel is shown to be analogous to energy splitting and quantum mechanical tunneling, respectively. This analogy allows investigation of regularization in various microwave cavities and, by extension to a lab-scale model, the behavior of complex quantum mechanical systems.
A compound tunneling mechanism from one integrable region to another mediated by a delocalized state in an intermediate chaotic region of phase space was recently introduced to explain peculiar features of tunneling in certain two-dimensional systems. This mechanism is known as chaos-assisted tunneling. We study its consequences for the distribution of the level splittings and obtain a general analytical form for this distribution under the assumption that chaos assisted tunneling is the only operative mechanism. %The validity of this form can then in %principle be checked either numerically or even experimentally. We have checked that the analytical form we obtain agrees with splitting distributions calculated numerically for a model system in which chaos-assisted tunneling is known to be the dominant mechanism. The distribution depends on two parameters: The first gives the scale of the splittings and is related to the magnitude of the classically forbidden processes, the second gives a measure of the efficiency of possible barriers to classical transport which may exist in the chaotic region. If these are weak, this latter parameter is irrelevant; otherwise it sets an energy scale at which the splitting distribution crosses over from one type of behavior to another. The detailed form of the crossover is also obtained and found to be in good agreement with numerical results for models for chaos-assisted tunneling.
, 042116 (2017)] is applied to calculate tunneling splittings for arbitrary vibrational states of model two-dimensional double-well systems. Cases in which the classical dynamics for the wells is chaotic, mixed, and regular are considered. A perturbative treatment, based on the condition of small tunneling amplitudes, is found to be sufficiently accurate for the cases studied and is applied for most of the calculations. Treatments that approximate certain imaginary-time trajectories in the classically forbidden region by linearization about a variety of judiciously selected reference trajectories yield good results for all systems treated. These calculations can be greatly simplified by approximating all imaginary-time trajectories as linearizations about a single reference trajectory. A simple way to determine optimal reference trajectories for this purpose is presented. It is found that their use yields splittings of satisfactory accuracy for the cases studied.
We study the nonequiliribium dynamics of atom-molecule Bose gases in a double-well potential. In this system, the internal atom-molecule tunneling has significant influence on the dynamics. We investigate the regularity of dynamics by studying the level statistics of the quantum system. We find that chaotic energy eigenstates arise from the competition between the interwell and the atom-molecule internal tunnelings. Furthermore, we show that the physical quantities relax to the microcanonical averages in the full-quantum dynamics when the system is chaotic. This thermalization is caused by the verification of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH). We show numerically that the onset of ETH occurs simultaneously with that of chaos. In addition, we show that the energy eigenstates become exponentially localized states simultaneously with the onset of chaos.
Scanning tunneling microscopy is introduced as an analytic tool for characterizing nanostructures and dynamics on the nanoscale. To analyze the underlying tunneling phenomenon, the Schrödinger equation is solved for a particle confined between finite potential energy steps. For a single potential energy well, the proper solutions to the Schrödinger equation are similar to those of a particle in an infinite box, except for the emerging “tails” of the stationary wave functions in the “classically forbidden” regions of the external confining potentials. For a symmetric double well potential, wave function penetration of the stationary solutions manifests in their even distribution among the wells. An attempt to localize the particle in one of them would lead to periodic oscillations between the wells, as if the particle can “tunnel” under the separating energy barrier. The wave function penetration and tunneling phenomena are discussed also in relation to energy band formation in periodic lattices.