New ideas are presented which relate dynamical features of quantum systems corresponding to chaos (so called “quantum chaos”) with the origin of irreversibility. They are based on studying topological defects of phase in the Husimi representation. Dynamical process leading to random phase is found in “quantum chaos”. The role of this for the origin of irreversibility is discussed from the following two points: (i) phase retrieval problem; (ii) entanglement of phase defects.
New ideas are presented which relate dynamical features of quantum systems corresponding to chaos (so called “quantum chaos”) with the origin of irreversibility. They are based on studying topological defects of phase in the Husimi representation. Dynamical process leading to random phase is found in “quantum chaos”. The role of this for the origin of irreversibility is discussed from the following two points: (i) phase retrieval problem; (ii) entanglement of phase defects.
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.
The pendulum is the simplest system having all the basic properties inherent in dynamic stochastic systems. In the present paper we investigate the pendulum with the aim to reveal the properties of a quantum analogue of dynamic stochasticity or, in other words, to obtain the basic properties of quantum chaos. It is shown that a periodic perturbation of the quantum pendulum (similarly to the classical one) in the neighborhood of the separatrix can bring about irreversible phenomena. As a result of recurrent passages between degenerate states, the system gets self-chaotized and passes from the pure state to the mixed one. Chaotization involves the states, the branch points of whose levels participate in a slow "drift" of the system along the Mathieu characteristics this "drift" being caused by a slowly changing variable field. Recurrent relations are obtained for populations of levels participating in the irreversible evolution process. It is shown that the entropy of the system first grows and, after reaching the equilibrium state, acquires a constant value.
The present collection of papers is devoted to a rather new and very controversial topic, the so-called “quantum chaos”. Some researchers see nothing essentially new at all in this phenomenon (apart from a number of various examples and models), and they have good reason to believe so. Indeed, the problems in this field all belong to the traditional, “old-fashion”, and rather “simple” quantum mechanics of finite-dimensional systems with a given interaction and no quantized fields. Nevertheless, many, including ourselves, consider quantum chaos to be a new discovery, though in an old field, of a great importance for fundamental physics. To understand this, the phenomenon of quantum chaos should be put into its proper perspective in recent developments in physics. The central point of this perspective is the conception of dynamical chaos (also a rather new topic) in classical mechanics (for a good review see, e.g., Refs.[l-3]). Thus before discussing the current understanding of quantum chaos we need briefly to describe classical dynamical chaos
Using the key properties of chaos, i.e. ergodicity and exponential instability, as a resource to control classical dynamics has a long and considerable history. However, in the context of controlling "chaotic" quantum unitary dynamics, the situation is far more tenuous. The classical concepts of exponential sensitivity to trajectory initial conditions and ergodicity do not directly translate into quantum unitary evolution. Nevertheless properties inherent to quantum chaos can take on those roles: i) the dynamical sensitivity to weak perturbations, measured by the fidelity decay, serves a similar purpose as the classical sensitivity to initial conditions; and ii) paired with the fact that quantum chaotic systems are conjectured to be statistically described by random matrix theory, implies a method to translate the ergodic feature into the control of quantum dynamics. With those two properties, it can be argued that quantum chaotic dynamical systems, in principle, allow for full controllability beyond a characteristic time that scales only logarithmically with system size and ℏ−1. In the spirit of classical targeting, it implies that it is possible to fine tune the immense quantum interference with weak perturbations and steer the system from any initial state into any desired target state, subject to constraints imposed by conserved quantities. In contrast, integrable dynamics possess neither ergodicity nor exponential instability, and thus the weak perturbations apparently must break the integrability for control purposes. The main ideas are illustrated with the quantum kicked rotor. The production of revivals, cat-like entangled states, and the transition from any random state to any other random state is possible as demonstrated.
In contrast to the classical Hamiltonian mechanics whose chaotic behaviors are now well established, quantum mechanics is still obscure about the origin of its random behavior. It is shown in this paper that in case of the stadium billiard, the fact that the nodal lines are smooth but are randomly oscillating, as first described by Heller, and MacDonald and Kaufman, can be interpreted as due to the irregular pseudochaotic behavior of the phase. To do this, we employ the path integral representation of propagator and the reinterpreted Bohm's formulation of quantum mechanics. Thus we reach the conclusion that although the chaotic behavior in quantum mechanics is suppressed by the Einstein quantization condition, it is observed in the properly defined phase of the propagator, or of the wave function, as a pseudochaos. In other words quantum mechanics has the counterpart of classical chaos in the phase of the propagator, and consequently, the wave function is also, pseudochaotic (random) with respect to q , but it does not exhibit exponential instability. The essential feature of quantum chaos manifests itself in the vanishings of the average of the wave function and the two-point correlation of the wave function at high energies. They are closely related to ergodicity and quantum measurement, and in particular new light will be shed on the measurement theory. The basic assumptions in the random matrix theory are discussed, confirming the universality of level spacing distribution.