Chaos and Quantum Mechanics

Abstract

The relationship between chaos and quantum mechanics has been somewhat uneasy -- even stormy, in the minds of some people. However, much of the confusion may stem from inappropriate comparisons using formal analyses. In contrast, our starting point here is that a complete dynamical description requires a full understanding of the evolution of measured systems, necessary to explain actual experimental results. This is of course true, both classically and quantum mechanically. Because the evolution of the physical state is now conditioned on measurement results, the dynamics of such systems is intrinsically nonlinear even at the level of distribution functions. Due to this feature, the physically more complete treatment reveals the existence of dynamical regimes -- such as chaos -- that have no direct counterpart in the linear (unobserved) case. Moreover, this treatment allows for understanding how an effective classical behavior can result from the dynamics of an observed quantum system, both at the level of trajectories as well as distribution functions. Finally, we have the striking prediction that time-series from measured quantum systems can be chaotic far from the classical regime, with Lyapunov exponents differing from their classical values. These predictions can be tested in next-generation experiments.

28 pages, 7 figures. Slightly revised version of invited talk to appear in Proceedings of the 16th Florida Workshop in Nonlinear Astronomy and Physics, dedicated to the memory of Henry Kandrup

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• Non-ergodic behaviour of clean Bose-Hubbard chains
• Semiclassics of the Chaotic Quantum-Classical Transition
• Quantum Chaos and Coherence: Random Parametric Quantum Channels
• Chaos and subdiffusion in the infinite-range coupled quantum kicked rotors
• Nonlinear Physics: Integrability, Chaos and Beyond
• Spatiotemporally ordered patterns in a chain of coupled dissipative kicked rotors
• Topological field theory of dynamical systems. II
• The ergodic and non-ergodic phases in one dimensional clean Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard system
• Topological field theory of dynamical systems
• Semiclassical evaluation of expectation values
• Paradigms for Quantum Feedback Control
• The information theory and the collapse of a wavefunction at the measurement of a spin 1/2 projection