We propose a prescription to quantize classical monomials in terms of symmetric and ordered expansions of noncommuting operators of a bosonic theory. As a direct application of such quantization rules, we quantize a classically time evolved function O(q,p,t), and calculate its expectation value in coherent states. The result can be expressed in terms of the application of a classical operator that performs a Gaussian smoothing of the original function O evaluated at the center of the coherent state. This scheme produces a natural semiclassical expansion for the quantum expectation values at a short time scale. Moreover, since the classical Liouville evolution of a Gaussian probability density gives the same form for the classical statistical mean value, we can calculate the first-order correction in h entirely from the associated classical time evolved function. This allows us to write a general expression for the Ehrenfest time in terms of the departure of the centroid of the quantum distribution from the classical trajectory, provided we start with an initially coherent state for each subsystem. In order to illustrate this approach, we have calculated analytically the Ehrenfest time of a model with N-coupled nonlinear oscillators with nonlinearity of even order.
We propose a prescription to quantize classical monomials in terms of symmetric and ordered expansions of noncommuting operators of a bosonic theory. As a direct application of such quantization rules, we quantize a classically time evolved function O(q,p,t), and calculate its expectation value in coherent states. The result can be expressed in terms of the application of a classical operator that performs a Gaussian smoothing of the original function O evaluated at the center of the coherent state. This scheme produces a natural semiclassical expansion for the quantum expectation values at a short time scale. Moreover, since the classical Liouville evolution of a Gaussian probability density gives the same form for the classical statistical mean value, we can calculate the first-order correction in h entirely from the associated classical time evolved function. This allows us to write a general expression for the Ehrenfest time in terms of the departure of the centroid of the quantum distribution from the classical trajectory, provided we start with an initially coherent state for each subsystem. In order to illustrate this approach, we have calculated analytically the Ehrenfest time of a model with N-coupled nonlinear oscillators with nonlinearity of even order.
For time-independent Hamiltonians, the dynamics of quantum expectation values of observables in coherent states |AˉT| can be easily represented as an integral formula involving forward and backward propagators |K±|. In the semiclassical regime, an approximate formula |AˉTsc| can be constructed via the replacement of |K±| by their semiclassical versions, followed by a consistent integration procedure. Alternatively, one can keep the original propagators and rewrite the integral formula for |AˉT| as a truncated series expansion, thus introducing a new approximate formula |AˉTse|. Yet a third approximation |AˉTcl| can be derived by use of a classical statistical approach based on the Liouville equation and Gaussian probability distributions. In the present paper, we develop these three approximate formulas for expectation values, apply them to simple systems, and evaluate their accuracy.
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.
Semiclassical mechanics allows for a description of quantum systems which preserves their phase information, and thus interference effects, while using only the system's classical dynamics as an input. In particular one of the strengths of a semiclassical description is to present a coherent picture which (to negligible higher-order ℏ corrections) is independent of the particular canonical coordinates used. However, this coherence relies heavily on the use of the stationary phase approximation. It turns out, however, that in some important cases, a brutal application of stationary phase approximation washes out all interference, and thus quantum, effects. In this paper, we address this issue in detail in one of its simplest instantiations, namely the evaluation of the time evolution of the expectation value of an operator. We explain why it is necessary to include contributions which are not in the neighborhood of stationary points and provide new semiclassical expressions for the evolution of the expectation values. The efficiency of our approach is based on the fact that we treat analytically all the integrals that can be performed within the stationary phase approximation, implying that the remaining integrals are simple integrals, in the sense that the integrand has no significant variations on the quantum scale (and thus they are very easy to perform numerically). This to be contrasted with other approaches such as the ones based on initial value representation, popular in chemical and molecular physics, which avoid a root search for the classical dynamics, but at the cost of performing numerically integrals whose evaluation requires a sampling on the quantum scale, and which are therefore not well designed to address the deep semiclassical regime. Along the way, we get a deeper understanding of the origin of these interference effects and an intuitive geometric picture associated with them.
The time-dependent WKB approximation for a coherent state is expanded to third order around a guiding real trajectory, allowing for the novel treatment of nonlinearity in its semiclassical dynamics, which is generally present in all physical systems far from the classical regime. The result is a closed-form solution consisting of a linear combination of Airy functions and their derivatives multiplied by an exponential. The expression's ability to capture nonlinearity is demonstrated by examining the autocorrelation of initial coherent states in anharmonic systems with few to many contributing periodic orbits. Its accuracy is compared to the quadratic expansion and found to be superior in regimes of ℏ where the curvature begins to be significant, as expected. Moreover, the expression is shown to be a real-trajectory uniformization over two coalescing saddle points that are emblematic of significant curvature. This extends real-trajectory time-dependent wave-packet semiclassical methods to highly anharmonic systems for the first time and establishes their regime of validity.
The dynamics of quantum expectation values is considered in a geometric setting. First, expectation values of the canonical operators are shown to be equivariant momentum maps for the action of the Heisenberg group on quantum states. Then, the Hamiltonian structure of Ehrenfest's theorem is shown to be Lie-Poisson for a semidirect-product Lie group, named the `Ehrenfest group'. In addition, quantum dynamics is expressed in the frame of the expectation values, in which the latter undergo canonical Hamiltonian motion. In the case of Gaussian states, expectation values dynamics couples to second-order moments, which also enjoy a momentum map structure. Eventually, Gaussian states are shown to possess a Lie-Poisson structure associated to a semidirect-product subgroup of the Ehrenfest group, which is called the Jacobi group. This structure produces new energy-conserving terms in a class of Gaussian moment models (previously appeared in the chemical physics literature) that suffer from lack of energy conservation in the general case.
We investigate symmetric oscillators, and in particular their quantization, by employing semiclassical and quantum phase functions introduced in the context of Liouville–Green transformations of the Schrödinger equation. For anharmonic oscillators, first-order semiclassical quantization is seldom accurate and the higher order expansions eventually break down given the asymptotic nature of the series. A quantum phase that allows us in principle to retrieve the exact quantum mechanical quantization condition and wavefunctions is given along with an iterative scheme to compute it. The arbitrariness surrounding quantum phase functions is lifted by supplementing the phase with boundary conditions involving high order semiclassical expansions. This allows us to extend the definition of oscillation numbers, which determine the quantization of the harmonic oscillator, to the anharmonic case. Several illustrations involving homogeneous as well as coupling constant dependant anharmonic oscillators are given.