We consider the Dicke Hamiltonian, a simple quantum-optical model which exhibits a zero-temperature quantum phase transition. We present numerical results demonstrating that at this transition the system changes from being quasi-integrable to quantum chaotic. By deriving an exact solution in the thermodynamic limit we relate this phenomenon to a localization-delocalization transition in which a macroscopic superposition is generated. We also describe the classical analogs of this behavior.
We consider the Dicke Hamiltonian, a simple quantum-optical model which exhibits a zero-temperature quantum phase transition. We present numerical results demonstrating that at this transition the system changes from being quasi-integrable to quantum chaotic. By deriving an exact solution in the thermodynamic limit we relate this phenomenon to a localization-delocalization transition in which a macroscopic superposition is generated. We also describe the classical analogs of this behavior.
We investigate the quantum-chaotic properties of the Dicke Hamiltonian; a quantum-optical model that describes a single-mode bosonic field interacting with an ensemble of N two-level atoms. This model exhibits a zero-temperature quantum phase transition in the N --> infinity limit, which we describe exactly in an effective Hamiltonian approach. We then numerically investigate the system at finite N, and by analyzing the level statistics, we demonstrate that the system undergoes a transition from quasi-integrability to quantum chaotic, and that this transition is caused by the precursors of the quantum phase transition. Our considerations of the wave function indicate that this is connected with a delocalization of the system and the emergence of macroscopic coherence. We also derive a semiclassical Dicke model that exhibits analogues of all the important features of the quantum model, such as the phase transition and the concurrent onset of chaos.
The local density of states or its Fourier transform, usually called fidelity amplitude, are important measures of quantum irreversibility due to imperfect evolution. In this Rapid Communication we study both quantities in a paradigmatic many body system, the Dicke Hamiltonian, where a single-mode bosonic field interacts with an ensemble of N two-level atoms. This model exhibits a quantum phase transition in the thermodynamic limit, while for finite instances the system undergoes a transition from quasi-integrability to quantum chaotic. We show that the width of the local density of states clearly points out the imprints of the transition from integrability to chaos but no trace remains of the quantum phase transition. The connection with the decay of the fidelity amplitude is also established.
Now, many different approaches have been presented to study the different semi-classical models derived from the Dicke Hamiltonian, which reflect a fact that the quantum-mechanical spin possesses no direct classical analog. The Hartree-Fock-type approximation is one of the widely used approaches, with which we derive the Heisenberg equations of motion for the system and replace the operators in these equations with the corresponding expectation values. In the present paper, we investigate the role of quantum phase transition in determining the chaotic property of the time-dependent driven Dicke model. The semi-classical Hamiltonian is derived by evaluating the expectation value of the Dicke Hamiltonian in a state, which is a product state of photonic and atomic coherent states. Based on the inverse of the relations between the position-momentum representation and the Bosonic creation-annihilation operators, the Hamiltonian is rewritten in the position-momentum representation and it undergoes a spontaneous symmetry-breaking phase transition, which is directly analogous to the quantum phase transition of the quantum system. In order to depict the Poincaré sections, which are used to analyze the trajectories through the four-dimensional phase space, we give the equations of motion of system from the derivatives of the semi-classical Hamiltonian for a variety of different parameters and initial conditions. According to the Dicke quantum phase transition observed from the experimental setup , we study the effect of a monochromatic non-adiabatic modulation of the atom-field coupling in Dicke model (i.e., the driven Dicke model) on the system chaos by adjusting the pump laser intensity. The change from periodic track to chaotic figure reflects the quantum properties of the system, especially the quantum phase transition point, which is a key position for people to analyse the shift from periodic orbit to chaos. In an undriven case, the system reduces to the standard Dicke model. We discover from the Poincaré sections that the system undergoes a change from the classical periodic orbit to a number of chaotic trajectories and in the superradiant phase area, the whole phase space is completely chaotic. When the static and driving coupling both exist, the system shows rich chaotic motion. The ground state properties are mainly determined by the static coupling, while the orbit of the system is adjusted by the driving coupling. If the static coupling is greater than the critical coupling, the system displays completely chaotic images in the Poincaré sections, and the periodic orbits in the chaos can also be adjusted by the strong driving coupling. While the static coupling is less than the critical coupling, the system can also show the chaotic images by adjusting the driving coupling strength and oscillation frequency. Moreover, by tuning the oscillation frequency, the Poincaré sections may change from the classical orbits to the chaos, and back to the classical orbits in the normal phase of the system.
Identifying the quantum signatures of classical chaos remains a central question in quantum physics, and quantum scrambling provides a new perspective on this correspondence. We study two distinct limits of the same model to examine how the correspondence between chaos and scrambling changes across different regimes. The thermodynamic-limit anisotropic Dicke model exhibits a close correspondence between chaos and scrambling, whereas this correspondence breaks down in the large-frequency-ratio limit of the anisotropic Rabi model (ARM). The contrasting chaotic behavior in the two limits originates from the different numbers of classical degrees of freedom, whereas their similar scrambling behavior stems from eigenstate delocalization. This implies that, in the large-frequency-ratio limit, eigenstate delocalization alone is insufficient to qualify the ARM as a classically chaotic model. This finding suggests that identifying chaos in quantum systems requires jointly considering the classical degrees of freedom and eigenstate delocalization.
We study the critical behavior of excited states and its relation to order and chaos in the Jaynes-Cummings and Dicke models of quantum optics. We show that both models exhibit a chain of excited-state quantum phase transitions demarcating the upper edge of the superradiant phase. For the Dicke model, the signatures of criticality in excited states are blurred by the onset of quantum chaos. We show that the emergence of quantum chaos is caused by the precursors of the excited-state quantum phase transition.
The energy spectrum of Dicke Hamiltonians with and without the rotating wave approximation for an arbitrary atom number is obtained analytically by means of the variational method, in which the effective pseudo-spin Hamiltonian resulting from the expectation value in the boson-field coherent state is diagonalized by the spin-coherent-state transformation. In addition to the ground-state energy, an excited macroscopic quantum-state is found corresponding to the south- and north-pole gauges of the spin-coherent states, respectively. Our results of ground-state energies in exact agreement with various approaches show that these models exhibit a zero-temperature quantum phase transition of the second order for any number of atoms, which was commonly considered as a phenomenon of the thermodynamic limit with the atom number tending to infinity. The critical behavior of the geometric phase is analyzed.