The time evolution of expectation values of the basic dynamic variables in a quantum system under different effective Planck constant were compared with the exact values of the basic dynamic variables in classical system. It is found, for the regular motion, the difference comes from the quantum effect; for the chaotic motion, it comes from the dynamical effect and the destruction of the dynamical system. With these results, a correspondence between the quantum heterogeneity of the phase space and the Lyapunov exponent is made satisfactorily.
The time evolution of expectation values of the basic dynamic variables in a quantum system under different effective Planck constant were compared with the exact values of the basic dynamic variables in classical system. It is found, for the regular motion, the difference comes from the quantum effect; for the chaotic motion, it comes from the dynamical effect and the destruction of the dynamical system. With these results, a correspondence between the quantum heterogeneity of the phase space and the Lyapunov exponent is made satisfactorily.
Two approaches to quantum-classical correspondence are distinguished according to the classical dynamical theory with which quantum theory is compared. The first of these, Ehrenfest correspondence, defines a dynamical regime in which the quantum expectation values follow approximately a classical trajectory. The second of these, Liouville correspondence, applies when the quantum probability distributions remain well approximated by a density in the classical phase space. The former applies only for narrow states, whereas the latter may remain valid even for quantum states that have spread to the system size. A spin model is adopted for this correspondence study because the quantum state is discrete and finite- dimensional, and thus no artificial truncation of the Hilbert space is required. The quantum time-evolution is given by a discrete unitary mapping. The corresponding classical model is volume-preserving (non-dissipative) and the time-evolution is given by a symplectic map. In classically chaotic regimes, the widths of initially narrow quantum states grow, on average, exponentially with time, until saturation at the system size. This initial spreading rate is well approximated by the classical Lyapunov exponent when the accessible classical phase space is predominantly chaotic. Because of the exponential growth rate of the quantum variance, the Ehrenfest regime is delimited by a break-time that grows logarithmically with increasing quantum numbers. The small differences between quantum expectation values and corresponding Liouville averages of dynamical variables also grow exponentially, initially, if the classical behaviour is chaotic. This exponential rate is independent of h and consistently larger than the classical Lyapunov exponent by at least a factor of two. Interestingly, this exponential growth rate does not continue until these differences approach magnitudes of order the system size, but crosses over to power-law growth (or simply saturates), when the differences have reached magnitudes no larger than order ħ. Because of the exponential growth of these quantum-classical differences, the Liouville regime is also delimited by a break-time that grows logarithmically with increasing quantum numbers. However, due to the early saturation of the exponential growth of the differences, the Liouville log break-time applies only in a restricted domain. After spreading to the system size, the quantum states relax to an approximately time-independent state. This is characterised by equilibrium distributions that are subject to rapidly oscillating fluctuations about the coarse-grained classical steady-state. If the accessible classical phase space is predominantly chaotic, then the equilibrium quantum probability distributions are nearly microcanonical. Otherwise the steady-state quantum probability distributions accurately reflect the details of the KAM surfaces in the classical phase space. The equilibrium regime quantum fluctuations, which are quantum-classical differences, are shown to approach zero as a negative power of the quantum numbers. Since the differences between quantum expectation values and individual classical trajectories grow exponentially in time to a magnitude that scales with the system size, the Ehrenfest regime is delimited by an unrestricted log break-time. The log break-time may be short compared to experimental time-scales for some chaotic macroscopic bodies, and, as a result, an observable breakdown of Ehrenfest correspondence may arise for some macroscopic systems. Although the Liouville regime is also delimited by a log break-time, an observable breakdown of correspondence between quantum mechanics and Liouville mechanics for macroscopic bodies is not likely since their differences, expressed relative to the dimensions of the observable, approach zero in the limit of large quantum numbers.
The conditions of quantum-classical correspondence for a system of two interacting spins are investigated. Differences between quantum expectation values and classical Liouville averages are examined for both regular and chaotic dynamics well beyond the short-time regime of narrow states. We find that quantum-classical differences initially grow exponentially with a characteristic exponent consistently larger than the largest Lyapunov exponent. We provide numerical evidence that the time of the break between the quantum and classical predictions scales as $\mathrm{log}(\mathcal{J}/\ensuremath{\Elzxh}),$ where J is a characteristic system action. However, this logarithmic break-time rule applies only while the quantum-classical deviations are smaller than $O(\ensuremath{\Elzxh}).$ We find that the quantum observables remain well approximated by classical Liouville averages over long times even for the chaotic motions of a few degree-of-freedom system. To obtain this correspondence it is not necessary to introduce the decoherence effects of a many degree-of-freedom environment.
We propose to study the L 2 -norm distance between classical and quantum phase space distributions, where for the latter we choose the Wigner function, as a global phase space indicator of quantum–classical correspondence. For example, this quantity should be the key to understanding the correspondence between quantum and classical Loschmidt echoes. We concentrate on fully chaotic systems with compact (finite) classical phase space. By means of numerical simulations and heuristic arguments we find that the quantum–classical fidelity stays at one up to the Ehrenfest-type time scale, which is proportional to the logarithm of effective Planck constant, and decays exponentially with a maximal classical Lyapunov exponent, after that time.
We study how decoherence rules the quantum-classical transition of the kicked harmonic oscillator. The system presents classical dynamics that ranges from regular to strong chaotic behavior depending on the amplitude of the kicks. We show that for regular and mixed classical dynamics, and in the presence of noise, the distance between the classical and quantum phase space distributions is proportional to a single parameter chi identical to K Planck's (eff)(2)/4D(3/2) , which relates the effective Planck constant, Planck's (eff), to the kicking strength, K, and the diffusion constant, D. This relation between classical and quantum distributions is valid when chi<1 , a case that is always attainable in the semiclassical regime, independent of the value of the strength of noise given by D. Our results extend a recent study performed in the chaotic regime.
The notion of quantum-classical correspondence is carefully investigated in order to prepare firm grounds for studying the spatiotemporal evolution of quantum states in the same spirit as for corresponding classical cases. Three relevant problems, (1) the integrability of dynamical equations of quantum systems, (2) the initial minimum uncertainty states one-to-one correspondent to classical phase points, and (3) the effective Planck constants for systems having analogous dynamical properties but exhibiting different quantum effects, have been successfully resolved. Then the solution ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{\ensuremath{\gamma}}(t)$ of the dynamical equation of a quantum integrable system is shown to be expressed as an analytical functional of the initial minimum uncertainty state ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{\ensuremath{\gamma}}^{0}$ varying smoothly with $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ and t. Such a general character of the quantum regular motion serves as a reference for the study of quantum irregular motion under the action of perturbed Hamiltonian.
Making use of appropriate quantum-classical correspondence we have examined the differential behavior of regular and chaotic trajectories in terms of quantum decoherence, the evolution of average quantities, and variances and entropy in a driven double-well oscillator in contact with the surroundings. Our numerical analysis has shown that even on a short time scale the decay of the average quantum coherence is multiexponential. While the onset of decoherence is much faster for a regular trajectory, the decay is faster asymptotically for a chaotic trajectory compared to a regular one. The coupling of the system to the environment turns chaotic in a regular evolution. The environment also affects the evolution of quantum variances for a regular trajectory almost from the beginning, while it has an insignificant effect on chaotic evolution up to a time after which, for both trajectories, noise in the quantum variances exhibits remarkable suppression, although fluctuations of the reservoir modes, in general, tend to increase the level of variances. We identify three stages of quantum evolution; a short decoherence regime followed by a Liouville flow, the latter regime being dominated by the classical curvature of the potential. This is the regime at which growth of entropy or quantum variances is exponential, the rate being determined by the classical largest Lyapunov exponent. The last stage is the irreversible flow dominated by diffusion which suppresses noises in the quantum variances. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.