The field of chaos in many-body quantum systems has a long history, going back to Wigner's simple models for heavy nuclei. Quantum chaos is being investigated in a broad variety of experimental platforms such as heavy nuclei, driven (few-electron) atoms, ultracold quantum gases, and photonic or microwave realizations. Quantum chaos plays a new and important role in many branches of physics, from condensed matter problems of many-body localization, including thermalization studies in closed and open quantum systems, and the question of dynamical stability relevant for quantum information and quantum simulation. This Special Issue and its related book address theories and experiments, methods from classical chaos, semiclassics, and random matrix theory, as well as many-body condensed matter physics. It is dedicated to Prof. Shmuel Fishman, who was one of the major representatives of the field over almost four decades, who passed away in 2019.
The field of chaos in many-body quantum systems has a long history, going back to Wigner's simple models for heavy nuclei. Quantum chaos is being investigated in a broad variety of experimental platforms such as heavy nuclei, driven (few-electron) atoms, ultracold quantum gases, and photonic or microwave realizations. Quantum chaos plays a new and important role in many branches of physics, from condensed matter problems of many-body localization, including thermalization studies in closed and open quantum systems, and the question of dynamical stability relevant for quantum information and quantum simulation. This Special Issue and its related book address theories and experiments, methods from classical chaos, semiclassics, and random matrix theory, as well as many-body condensed matter physics. It is dedicated to Prof. Shmuel Fishman, who was one of the major representatives of the field over almost four decades, who passed away in 2019.
Quantum chaos concerns the emergence of universal statistical and dynamical prop- erties in quantum systems whose classical counterparts exhibit chaotic behavior. Unlike classical chaos, which can be characterized by sensitivity to initial conditions and exponential divergence of trajectories, quantum chaos manifests itself through a variety of indirect diagnostics, including spectral correlations, operator growth, and information scrambling. Understanding how these signatures arise from microscopic dynamics, and how they can be accessed in realistic many-body systems, is a central challenge in modern physics. This thesis investigates quantum chaos from complementary theoretical and practical perspectives. On the theoretical side, it develops effective descriptions of chaotic dy- namics in many-body systems with approximate symmetries, focusing on how weak symmetry breaking controls the exploration of Hilbert space and the crossover to random-matrix universality. Using perturbative arguments, numerical simulations, and a nonlinear sigma-model formulation, we identify a regime of Hilbert-space dif- fusion in which chaotic dynamics unfolds through a slow, collective spreading across nearly decoupled symmetry sectors. On the practical side, the thesis addresses the question of how paradigmatic chaotic models can be realized and probed in controlled experimental platforms. In partic- ular, it explores quantum simulation schemes for Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev (SYK) models using cavity quantum electrodynamics. By employing time-dependent disorder and Trotterized evolution in single-mode optical cavities, we demonstrate how low-rank interactions can be systematically promoted to effective all-to-all randomness, re- producing the spectral and dynamical signatures of SYK physics. Extensions to open-system dynamics are discussed, including Lindbladian realizations and the role of dissipation. The thesis thus highlights the connections between effective descriptions of quantum chaos and their implementation in controlled quantum simulation settings.
This book introduces the quantum mechanics of classically chaotic systems, or quantum chaos for short. The author's philosophy has been to keep the discussion simple and to illustrate theory, wherever possible, with experimental or numerical examples. The microwave billiard experiments, initiated by the author and his group, play a major role in this respect. Topics covered include the various types of billiard experiment, random matrix theory, systems with periodic time dependences, the analogy between the dynamics of a one-dimensional gas with a repulsive interaction and spectral level dynamics, where an external parameter takes the role of time, scattering theory distributions and fluctuation, properties of scattering matrix elements, semiclassical quantum mechanics, periodic orbit theory, and the Gutzwiller trace formula. This book will be of great value to anyone working in quantum chaos.
Many-body quantum chaos at ℏ∼1: Analytic connection to random matrix theory
A key goal of quantum chaos is to establish a relationship between widely observed universal spectral fluctuations of clean quantum systems and random matrix theory (RMT). For single particle systems with fully chaotic classical counterparts, the problem has been partly solved by Berry (1985) within the so-called diagonal approximation of semiclassical periodic-orbit sums. Derivation of the full RMT spectral form factor K(t) from semiclassics has been completed only much later in a tour de force by Mueller et al (2004). In recent years, the questions of long-time dynamics at high energies, for which the full many-body energy spectrum becomes relevant, are coming at the forefront even for simple many-body quantum systems, such as locally interacting spin chains. Such systems display two universal types of behaviour which are termed as `many-body localized phase' and `ergodic phase'. In the ergodic phase, the spectral fluctuations are excellently described by RMT, even for very simple interactions and in the absence of any external source of disorder. Here we provide the first theoretical explanation for these observations. We compute K(t) explicitly in the leading two orders in t and show its agreement with RMT for non-integrable, time-reversal invariant many-body systems without classical counterparts, a generic example of which are Ising spin 1/2 models in a periodically kicking transverse field.
Experimental progress in the miniaturization of electronic devices has made routinely available in the laboratory small electronic systems, on the micrometre or sub-micrometre scale, which at low temperature are sufficiently well isolated from their environment to be considered as fully coherent. Some of their most important properties are dominated by the interaction between electrons. Understanding their behaviour therefore requires a description of the interplay between interference effects and interactions. The goal of this review is to address this relatively broad issue and more specifically to address it from the perspective of the quantum chaos community. I will therefore present some of the concepts developed in the field of quantum chaos which may be applied to the study of many-body effects in mesoscopic and nanoscopic systems. Their implementation is illustrated in a few examples of experimental relevance such as persistent currents, mesoscopic fluctuations of Kondo properties or Coulomb blockade. I will furthermore try to bring out, from the various physical illustrations, some of the specific advantages on more general grounds of the quantum chaos based approach.
Abstract This work develops a quantum control application of many-body quantum chaos for ultracold bosonic gases trapped in optical lattices. It is long known how to harness exponential sensitivity to changes in initial conditions for control purposes in classically chaotic systems. In the technique known as targeting, instead of a hindrance to control, the instability becomes a resource. Recently, this classical targeting has been generalized to quantum systems either by periodically countering the inevitable quantum state spreading or by introducing a control Hamiltonian, where both enable localized states to be guided along special chaotic trajectories toward any of a broad variety of desired target states. Only strictly unitary dynamics are involved; i.e. it gives a coherent quantum targeting. In this paper, the introduction of a control Hamiltonian is applied to Bose–Hubbard systems in chaotic dynamical regimes. Properly selected unstable mean field solutions can be followed particularly rapidly to states possessing precise phase relationships and occupancies. In essence, the method generates a quantum simulation technique that can access rather special states. The protocol reduces to a time-dependent control of the chemical potentials, opening up the possibility for application in optical lattice experiments. Explicit applications to custom state preparation and stabilization of quantum many-body scars are presented in one- and two-dimensional lattices (three-dimensional applications are similarly possible).
Abstract Quantum chaos of many-body (MB) systems has been swiftly developing into a vibrant research area at the interface between various disciplines, ranging from statistical physics to condensed matter to quantum information and to cosmology. In quantum systems with a classical limit, advanced semiclassical methods provide the crucial link between classically chaotic dynamics and corresponding universal features at the quantum level. Recently, single-particle (SP) techniques dealing with ergodic wave interference in the usual semiclassical limit ℏ → 0 have begun to be transformed into the field theoretical domain of N -particle systems in the analogous semiclassical limit ℏ e f f = 1 / N → 0 , thereby accounting for genuine MB quantum interference. This semiclassical MB theory provides a unified framework for understanding random-matrix correlations of both SP and MB quantum chaotic systems. Certain braided bundles of classical orbits, and of mean field modes, govern interference, respectively, and provide the key to the foundation of universality. Case studies presented include an MB version of Gutzwiller’s trace formula for the spectral density and out-of-time-order correlators along with brief remarks on where further progress may be forthcoming.