Physics – Quantum Physics
Scientific paper
2005-05-11
Physics
Quantum Physics
28 pages, 7 figures. Slightly revised version of invited talk to appear in Proceedings of the 16th Florida Workshop in Nonline
Scientific paper
10.1196/annals.1350.026
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.
Bhattacharya Tanmoy
Greenbaum Benjamin
Habib Salman
Jacobs Kurt
Shizume Kosuke
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