We consider the dynamics of a particle inside the metastable well of a cubic potential. In the classical picture the particle can oscillate inside the well when its total energy is less than a critical value Ec at which point a homoclinic bifurcation occurs. The quantum particle is always supposed to tunnel out. We set up a semi classical dynamics (which cannot capture tunneling effects) of the quantum particle which can be analyzed in terms of fixed points and stabilities and thus yields quantitative results. We find that the quantum fluctuations smear out the homoclinic bifurcation and for energies greater than a new critical value, substantially less than Ec, the particle always escapes from the well. This implies that even for an initial wave packet centered at the minimum of the well, there is a critical value of the width for which the particle tunnels out even in this semi-classical limit.
We consider the dynamics of a particle inside the metastable well of a cubic potential. In the classical picture the particle can oscillate inside the well when its total energy is less than a critical value Ec at which point a homoclinic bifurcation occurs. The quantum particle is always supposed to tunnel out. We set up a semi classical dynamics (which cannot capture tunneling effects) of the quantum particle which can be analyzed in terms of fixed points and stabilities and thus yields quantitative results. We find that the quantum fluctuations smear out the homoclinic bifurcation and for energies greater than a new critical value, substantially less than Ec, the particle always escapes from the well. This implies that even for an initial wave packet centered at the minimum of the well, there is a critical value of the width for which the particle tunnels out even in this semi-classical limit.
For suitable parameters, the classical Duffing oscillator has a known bistability in its stationary states, with low- and high-amplitude branches. As expected from the analogy with a particle in a double-well potential, transitions between these states become possible either at finite temperature, or in the quantum regime due to tunneling. In this analogy, besides local stability, one can also discuss global stability by comparing the two potential minima. For the Duffing oscillator, the stationary states emerge dynamically so that a priori, a potential-minimum criterion for them does not exist. However, global stability is still relevant, and definable as the state containing the majority population for long times, low temperature, and close to the classical limit. Further, the crossover point is the parameter value at which global stability abruptly changes from one state to the other. For the double-well model, the crossover point is defined by potential-minimum degeneracy. Given that this analogy is so effective in other respects, it is thus striking that for the Duffing oscillator, the crossover point turns out to be non-unique. Rather, none of the three aforementioned limits commute with each other, and the limiting behaviour depends on the order in which they are taken. More generally, as both $\hbar\To0$ and $T\To0$, the ratio ℏω0/kBT continues to be a key parameter and can have any nonnegative value. This points to an apparent conceptual difference between equilibrium and nonequilibrium tunneling. We present numerical evidence by studying the pertinent quantum master equation in the photon-number basis. Independent verification and some further understanding are obtained using a semi-analytical approach in the coherent-state representation.
We show how a dynamical systems approach can, somewhat unexpectedly, be relevant in the quantum dynamics featuring oscillations and escape in the Morse potential. We compare the dynamics resulting from the approach with the results obtained from a direct numerical integration of the relevant Schrödinger equation to support our claim. An interesting finding of the numerical investigation is the marked increase in the probability of obtaining a significant fraction (more than 50%) of the wave packet in the classically forbidden range beyond a critical energy of the packet. The fact that the dynamical systems approach shows an instability near that critical energy is a definite indication of the relevance of dynamical systems to the quantum dynamics. At lower energies, the calculated mean position 〈x〉 and variance V from the dynamical system allow us to clearly establish the phenomenon of tunneling since the sum 〈x〉+sqrt[V] clearly exceeds, at various times, the classical bound on displacement for the corresponding energy.
I compare the quantum and classical dynamics of a particle moving in a cosine potential while subject to a time-dependent force. I concentrate here on the behavior of an initially well-localized wave packet at times before the classically chaotic motion is fully developed. I find that the quantum and classical dynamics are indistinguishable well beyond the Ehrenfest time where the wave packet delocalizes. The quantum and classical descriptions first differ precisely when the classical probability density is folded in the vicinity of a hyperbolic fixed point. At this point, the wave function acquires a nodal structure which I show to be the result of a simple beating phenomenon between paths in the semiclassical propagator. When the interaction of the classical manifold with the hyperbolic fixed point leads to escape from the remnant separatrix, representing the onset of classical chaos, the interference associated with the tendril leads to a long-lived accumulation of quantum amplitude on top of the cosine barrier. This effect also has a semiclassical interpretation, meaning that it arises from the interference between classical paths, but one must expand to second order in Planck's constant to describe the behavior correctly. Both the nodal structure and this pinning of amplitude on the barrier are dynamic mechanisms for the quantum inhibition of mixing. I then couple the system to a bath of harmonic oscillators in order to study the effect of the environment on these mechanisms. Although an oscillator bath environment brings dissipation as well as noise to the problem, the noise effect dominates for the high temperature, weak coupling regime I study. When there is sufficient noise to render the interfering classical paths indistinguishable, I find that the quantum interference gets erased. This dephasing occurs at very early times, long before there is appreciable dissipation of energy to the environment. Consequently, one can argue that the presence of an environment, even if its effect would be negligible in a nonchaotic setting, allows for the possibility of quantum mixing.
In the usual quantum tunneling, a low-energy quantum particle penetrates across a physical barrier of higher potential energy, by traversing a classically forbidden region, and finally escapes into another region. In an analogous scenario, a classical particle inside a closed regular region in the phase space is dynamically bound from escaping to other regions of the phase space. Here, the physical potential barrier is replaced by dynamical barriers which separate different regions of the phase space. However, in the quantum regime, the system can overcome such dynamical barriers and escape through them, giving rise to dynamical tunneling. In chaotic Hamiltonian systems, dynamical tunneling refers to quantum tunneling between states whose classical limits correspond to symmetry-related regular regions separated by a chaotic zone between which any classical transport is prohibited. Here, an experimental realization of dynamical tunneling in spin systems is reported using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) architecture. In particular, dynamical tunneling in quantum kicked tops of spin-1 and spin-3/2 systems using two- and three-qubit NMR registers is investigated. By extracting time-dependent expectation values of the angular momentum operator components, size-dependent tunneling behavior for various initial states is systematically investigated. Further, by monitoring the adverse effects of dephasing noise on the tunneling oscillations, we assert the importance of quantum coherence in enabling dynamical tunneling.
Motivated by recent experimental progress to readout quantum bits implemented in superconducting circuits via the phenomenon of dynamical bifurcation, transitions between steady orbits in a driven anharmonic oscillator, the Duffing oscillator, are analyzed. In the regime of weak dissipation a consistent diffusion equation in the semiclassical limit is derived to capture the intimate relation between finite tunneling and reflection and bath induced quantum fluctuations. From the corresponding steady-state distribution an analytical expression for the switching probability is obtained. It is shown that a reduction of the transition rate due to finite reflection at the phase-space barrier is overcompensated by an increase due to environmental quantum fluctuations that are specific for diffusion processes over dynamical barriers. The scaling behavior of the rate is discussed and it is revealed that close to the bifurcation threshold the escape dynamics enters an overdamped domain such that the quantum-mechanical energy scale associated with friction even exceeds the thermal energy scale.
The tunneling dynamics of superfluid Fermi gas in a triple-well potential in the unitarity regime is investigated in the present paper. The fixed points of the (0,0) mode and the (π,π) mode are given. We find that the interaction parameter U and the coupling strength k could have an extreme effect on the quantum tunneling dynamics. We also find that, in the zero mode, only Josophson oscillation appears. However, for the π mode, the trapping phenomena take place. An irregular oscillation of the particle number in each well could appear by adjusting the scanning period T . It is noted that if the scanning period is less than a critical point T *, the particle number will come back to the fixed point with small oscillation, while if T > T * the particle number cannot come back to the fixed point, but with irregular oscillations. The dependence of the critical point T * on the system parameter of coupling strength k is numerically given.