Concerning fluctuations in quantum chaos

Giulio Casati

Avijit Lahiri, Sankhasubhra Nag

Steven Tomsovic

Through semiclassical methods the subject of quantum chaos motivates and depends on Hamiltonian chaos research. Presented here is a selection of some of the most important Hamiltonian chaos topics that in this way get directly related to any of a variety of quantum chaos research problems. The overall emphasis is on intuitive explanations and illustrations of various ideas with the references containing more mathematically rigorous expositions. The chapter begins with a description of various useful theoretical and computational tools of chaos research, e.g.~surfaces of section, paradigms of chaos, stability analysis, and symbolic dynamics... This is followed by discussions regarding the geometry of chaos, how chaotic systems respond to perturbations, and the complexification of Hamiltonian dynamics. Most of the contents concern topics that are long established and well known by now. The exceptions involve complications that arise from the complexification of phase space variables and time. There are relatively recent results summarized regarding the appropriate branches of determinant phases and how to distinguish complex trajectories that are associated with classically allowed processes versus those associated with non-allowed ones.

Franco Pellegrini, Simone Montangero

We analyze the fidelity of a quantum simulation and we show that it displays fractal fluctuations if and only if the simulated dynamics is chaotic. This analysis allows us to investigate a given simulated dynamics without any prior knowledge. In the case of integrable dynamics, the appearance of fidelity fractal fluctuations is a signal of a highly corrupted simulation. We conjecture that fidelity fractal fluctuations are a signature of the appearance of quantum chaos. Our analysis can be realized already by a few-qubit quantum processor.

G. P. Berman

P. Lebœuf