A general program to show quantum-classical correspondence for bound conservative integrable and chaotic systems is described. The method is applied to integrable systems and the nature of the approach to the classical limit, the cancellation of essential singularities, is demonstrated. The application to chaotic systems requires an understanding of classical Liouville eigenfunctions and a Liouville spectral decomposition, developed herein. General approaches to the construction of these Liouville eigenfunctions and classical spectral projectors in quantum and classical mechanics are discussed and are employed to construct Liouville eigenfunctions for classically chaotic systems. Correspondence for systems whose classical analogs are chaotic is discussed, based on this decomposition, in the following paper [Phys. Rev. A 54, 43 (1996)].
A general program to show quantum-classical correspondence for bound conservative integrable and chaotic systems is described. The method is applied to integrable systems and the nature of the approach to the classical limit, the cancellation of essential singularities, is demonstrated. The application to chaotic systems requires an understanding of classical Liouville eigenfunctions and a Liouville spectral decomposition, developed herein. General approaches to the construction of these Liouville eigenfunctions and classical spectral projectors in quantum and classical mechanics are discussed and are employed to construct Liouville eigenfunctions for classically chaotic systems. Correspondence for systems whose classical analogs are chaotic is discussed, based on this decomposition, in the following paper [Phys. Rev. A 54, 43 (1996)].
The quantum dynamics of a classically chaotic model are studied in the approach to the macroscopic limit. The quantum predictions are compared and contrasted with the classical predictions of both Newtonian and Liouville mechanics. The time-domain scaling of the optimal quantum-classical correspondence is analyzed in detail in the case of both classical theories. In both cases the correspondence for observable quantities is shown to break down on a time-scale that increases very slowly (logarithmically) with increasing system size. In the case of quantum-Liouville correspondence such a short time-scale does not imply a breakdown of correspondence since the largest quantum-Liouville differences reached on this time-scale decrease rapidly (as an inverse power) with increasing system size. Therefore the statistical properties of chaotic dynamics are, as expected, well described by quantum theory in the macroscopic limit. In contrast, the largest quantum-Newtonian differences reached on the log time-scale actually increase in proportion to the system size. Since the invariance properties of the Hamiltonian impose functional constraints on the time-varying chaotic coordinates, it is possible to show, moreover, that if the quantum predictions are believed to describe the coordinates of individual chaotic systems, then they also predict macroscopic violations of any kinematic or dynamic constants of the motion. These results for chaotic systems indicate that a valid description of the time-varying properties of individual macroscopic bodies is not available within the standard interpretive framework of quantum theory.
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 classical-quantum correspondence is developed in its most natural setting, i.e., that of phase space distributions. Specifically, the Wigner–Weyl representation of the two fundamental quantum densities ‖n≳<n‖ and ‖n≳<m‖, which are eigenstates of the quantum Liouville operator, are shown, for integrable systems, to yield stationary and nonstationary classical Liouville eigenstates in the ℏ→0 limit. The former are uniform distributions on semiclassically quantized tori, whereas the latter are nonuniform distributions on similar tori at intermediate actions. Applications to semiclassical mechanics in action-angle variable, the Heisenberg correspondence for matrix elements and the computation of vibrational intensities are provided.
Abstract We discuss the spectral property of unstable dynamical systems in both classical and quantum mechanics. An important class of unstable dynamical systems corresponds to the Large Poincare Systems (LPS). Conventional perturbation technique leads then to divergences. We introduce methods for the elimination of Poincare divergences to obtain a solution of the spectral problem analytic in the coupling constant. To do so, we have to enlarge the class of permissible transformations, to include non-unitary transformations as well as to extend the Hilbert space. A simple example refers to the Friedrichs model, which was studied independently by George Sudarshan and his co-workers. However, our main interest is the irreducible representations in the Liouville space. In these representations the central quantity is the density matrix, and the eigenfunctions of the Liouville operator cannot be expressed in terms of the wave functions. We suggest that this situation corresponds to quantum chaos. Indeed, classical chaos does not mean that Newton's equation becomes "wrong" but that trajectories loose their operational meaning. Similarly, whenever we have an irreducible representation in the Liouville space this means that the wave function description looses its operational meaning. Additional statistical features appear. A simple example corresponds to persistent interactions in the scattering problem which cannot be treated in the frame of usual S-matrix theory.
We numerically study the work distributions in a chaotic system and examine the relationship between quantum work and classical work. Our numerical results suggest that there exists a correspondence principle between quantum and classical work distributions in a chaotic system. This correspondence was proved for one-dimensional integrable systems in a recent work [Jarzynski, Quan, and Rahav, Phys. Rev. X 5, 031038 (2015)1063-651X10.1103/PhysRevX.5.031038]. Our investigation further justifies the definition of quantum work via two-point energy measurements.