In this review, we compare different descriptions of photon-number statistics in harmonic generation processes within quantum, classical and semiclassical approaches. First, we study the exact quantum evolution of the harmonic generation by applying numerical methods including those of Hamiltonian diagonalization and global characteristics. We show explicitly that the harmonic generations can indeed serve as a source of nonclassical light. Then, we demonstrate that the quasi-stationary sub-Poissonian light can be generated in these quantum processes under conditions corresponding to the so-called no-energy-transfer regime known in classical nonlinear optics. By applying method of classical trajectories, we demonstrate that the analytical predictions of the Fano factors are in good agreement with the quantum results. On comparing second and higher harmonic generations in the no-energy-transfer regime, we show that the highest noise reduction is achieved in third-harmonic generation with the Fano-factor of the third harmonic equal to 13/16.
The semiclassical treatment of the two-dimensional harmonic oscillator provides an instructive example of the relation between classical motion and the quantum mechanical energy spectrum. We extend previous work on the anisotropic oscillator with incommensurate frequencies and the isotropic oscillator to the case with commensurate frequencies for which the Lissajous curves appear as classical periodic orbits. Because of the three different scenarios depending on the ratio of its frequencies, the two-dimensional harmonic oscillator offers a unique way to explicitly analyze the role of symmetrie…
In this article we extend previous semiclassical studies by including more general perturbative potentials of the harmonic oscillator in arbitrary spatial dimensions. Our starting point is a radial harmonic potential with an arbitrary even monomial perturbation, which we use to study the resulting $\mathrm{U}(D)$ to $\mathrm{O}(D)$ symmetry breaking. We derive the gross structure of the semiclassical spectrum from periodic orbit theory, in the form of a perturbative ($\hbar \rightarrow 0$) trace formula. We then show how to apply the results to even order polynomial potentials, possibly includ…
We consider a mixture of two-component Fermi gases at low temperature. The density profile of this degenerate Fermi gas is calculated under the semiclassical approximation. The results show that the fermion-fermion interactions make a large correction to the density profile at low temperature. The phase separation of such a mixture is also discussed for both attractive and repulsive interatomic interactions, and the numerical calculations demonstrate the exist of a stable temperature region $T_{c1}<T<T_{c2}$ for the mixture. In addition, we give the critical temperature of the BCS-type transit…
We introduce an improved semiclassical dynamics approach to quantum vibrational spectroscopy. In this method, a harmonic-based phase space sampling is preliminarily driven toward non-harmonic quantization by slowly switching on the actual potential. The new coordinates and momenta serve as initial conditions for the semiclassical dynamics calculation, leading to a substantial decrease in the number of chaotic trajectories to deal with. Applications are presented for model and molecular systems of increasing dimensionality characterized by moderate or high chaoticity. They include a bidimension…
Semiclassical quantization is exact only for the so called \emph{solvable} potentials, such as the harmonic oscillator. In the \emph{nonsolvable} case the semiclassical phase, given by a series in $\hbar$, yields more or less approximate results and eventually diverges due to the asymptotic nature of the expansion. A quantum phase is derived to bypass these shortcomings. It achieves exact quantization of nonsolvable potentials and allows to obtain the quantum wavefunction while locally approaching the best pre-divergent semiclassical expansion. An iterative procedure allowing to implement prac…
Quantisation with Gaussian type states offers certain advantages over other quantisation schemes, in particular, they can serve to regularise formally discontinuous classical functions leading to well defined quantum operators. In this work we define a squeezed state quantisation in two dimensions using several families of squeezed states for one- and two-mode configurations. The completeness relations of the squeezed states are exploited in order to tackle the quantisation and semiclassical analysis of a constrained position dependent mass model with harmonic potential. The effects of the squ…
Inspired by special and general relativistic systems that can have Hamiltonians involving square roots, or more general fractional powers, in this article we address the question how a suitable set of coherent states for such systems can be obtained. This becomes a relevant topic if the semiclassical sector of a given quantum theory wants to be analysed. As a simple setup we consider the toy model of a deparametrised system with one constraint that involves a fractional power of the harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian operator and we discuss two approaches for finding suitable coherent states for …
The quench dynamics of the Hubbard model in tilted and harmonic potentials is discussed within the semiclassical picture. Applying the fermionic truncated Wigner approximation (fTWA), the dynamics of imbalances for charge and spin degrees of freedom is analyzed and its time evolution is compared with the exact simulations in one-dimensional lattice. Quench from charge or spin density wave is considered. We show that introduction of harmonic and spin-dependent linear potentials sufficiently validates fTWA for longer times. Such an improvement of fTWA is also obtained for the higher order correl…
We study different quantum one dimensional systems with noncanonical commutation rule $[x,p]=i\hbar (1+sH),$ where $H$ is the one particle Hamiltonian and $s$ is a parameter. This is carried-out using semiclassical arguments and the surmise $\hbar \to \hbar (1+sE),$ where $E$ is the energy. We compute the spectrum of the potential box, the harmonic oscillator, and a more general power-law potential $| x| ^ν$% . With the above surmise, and changing the size of the elementary cell in the phase space, we obtain an expression for the partition function of these systems. We calculate the first orde…
Quantum mechanics has been formulated in phase space, with the Wigner function as the representative of the quantum density operator, and classical mechanics has been formulated in Hilbert space, with the Groenewold operator as the representative of the classical Liouville density function. Semiclassical approximations to the quantum evolution of the Wigner function have been defined, enabling the quantum evolution to be approached from a classical starting point. Now analogous semiquantum approximations to the classical evolution of the Groenewold operator are defined, enabling the classical …
We present a methodology for computing vibrationally and time-resolved pump-probe spectra, which takes into account all vibrational degrees of freedom and is based on the combination of the thawed Gaussian approximation with on-the-fly ab initio evaluation of the electronic structure. The method is applied to the phenyl radical and compared with two more approximate approaches based on the global harmonic approximation - the global harmonic method expands both the ground- and excited-state potential energy surfaces to the second order about the corresponding minima, while the combined global h…
This paper presents a unified semiclassical framework for five regimes of quantum fidelity decay and conjectures a new universal regime. The theory is based solely on the statistics of actions in the dephasing representation. Counterintuitively, in this representation, all of the decay is due to interference and none due to the decay of classical overlaps. Both rigorous and numerical support of the theory is provided.
We give a path integral formulation of the time evolution of qudits of odd dimension. This allows us to consider semiclassical evolution of discrete systems in terms of an expansion of the propagator in powers of $\hbar$. The largest power of $\hbar$ required to describe the evolution is a traditional measure of classicality. We show that the action of the Clifford operators on stabilizer states can be fully described by a single contribution of a path integral truncated at order $\hbar^0$ and so are "classical," just like propagation of Gaussians under harmonic Hamiltonians in the continuous …
We present theoretical studies of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) produced by non-homogeneous fields as resulting from the illumination of plasmonic nanostructures with a short laser pulse. We show that both the inhomogeneity of the local fields and the confinement of the electron movement play an important role in the HHG process and lead to the generation of even harmonics and a significantly increased cutoff, more pronounced for the longer wavelengths cases studied. In order to understand and characterize the new HHG features we employ two different approaches: the numerical solution o…
We present a simple method to deal with caustics in the semiclassical approximation to the partition function of a one-dimensional quantum system. The procedure, which makes use of complex trajectories, is applied to the quartic double-well potential.
Introduction Path Integrals - Introduction - Propagator - Free Particle - Path Integral Representation of Quantum Mechanics - Particle on a Ring - Particle in a Box - Driven Harmonic Oscillator - Semiclassical Approximation - Imaginary Time Path Integral Dissipative Systems - Introduction - Environment as Collection of Harmonic Oscillators - Effective Action Damped Harmonic Oscillator - Partition Function - Ground State Energy and Density of States - Position Autocorrelation Function
Energy level statistics of quantized chaotic systems have been evaluated in the semiclassical limit via their periodic orbits using the Gutzwiller and related trace formulae. Here we evaluate a spectral statistic of chaotic 4-regular quantum graphs from their periodic orbits without the semiclassical limit. The variance of the n-th coefficient of the characteristic polynomial is determined by the sizes of the sets of distinct primitive periodic orbits with n bonds which have no self-intersections, and the sizes of the sets with a given number of self-intersections which all consist of two sect…
Operadic Lax representations for the harmonic oscillator are used to construct the quantum counterparts of some real three dimensional Lie algebras. The Jacobi operators of these quantum algebras are studied in semiclassical approximation.
We analyze the strength of polarization correlations between two light beams that can be achieved in the semiclassical regime using statistical mixtures of coherent states and binary on/off detectors. Under certain symmetry assumptions, the visibility of polarization correlations is shown to be bounded by 1/3, which is in a striking contrast with perfect 100% correlations exhibited by photon pairs prepared in the singlet state. The semiclassical limit is demonstrated in a measurement performed on a pair of laser beams undergoing correlated depolarization. This result illustrates the dramatic d…
Optimal entrainment of a quantum nonlinear oscillator to a periodically modulated weak harmonic drive is studied in the semiclassical regime. By using the semiclassical phase reduction theory recently developed for quantum nonlinear oscillators, two types of optimization problems, one for the stability and the other for the phase coherence of the entrained state, are considered. The optimal waveforms of the periodic amplitude modulation can be derived by applying the classical optimization methods to the semiclassical phase equation that approximately describes the quantum limit-cycle dynamics…
We develop a general theoretical framework of semiclassical phase reduction for analyzing synchronization of quantum limit-cycle oscillators. The dynamics of quantum dissipative systems exhibiting limit-cycle oscillations are reduced to a simple, one-dimensional classical stochastic differential equation approximately describing the phase dynamics of the system under the semiclassical approximation. The density matrix and power spectrum of the original quantum system can be approximately reconstructed from the reduced phase equation. The developed framework enables us to analyze synchronizatio…
Nambu mechanics is a generalized Hamiltonian dynamics characterized by an extended phase space and multiple Hamiltonians. In a previous paper [Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2013, 073A01 (2013)] we revealed that the Nambu mechanical structure is hidden in Hamiltonian dynamics, that is, the classical time evolution of variables including redundant degrees of freedom can be formulated as Nambu mechanics. In the present paper we show that the Nambu mechanical structure is also hidden in some quantum or semiclassical dynamics, that is, in some cases the quantum or semiclassical time evolution of expectat…
We present a semiclassical approach to eigenfunction statistics in chaotic and weakly disordered quantum systems which goes beyond Random Matrix Theory, supersymmetry techniques, and existing semiclassical methods. The approach is based on a generalization of Berry's Random Wave Model, combined with a consistent semiclassical representation of spatial two-point correlations. We derive closed expressions for arbitrary wavefunction averages in terms of universal coefficients and sums over classical paths, which contain, besides the supersymmetry results, novel oscillatory contributions. Their ph…
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 in principle to retrieve the exact quantum mechanical quantization condition and wavefunctions is given along with an iterative scheme to compute it. The arbitrariness …
We discover quantum Hall like jumps in the saturation spectral rigidity in the semiclassical spectrum of a modified Kepler problem as a function of the interval center. These jumps correspond to integer decreases of the radial winding numbers in classical periodic motion. We also discover and explain single harmonic dominated oscillations of the level number variance with the width of the energy interval. The level number variance becomes effectively zero for the interval widths defined by the frequency of the shortest periodic orbit. This signifies that there are virtually no variations from …
In two-dimensional space there are possibilities for quantum statistics continuously interpolating between the bosonic and the fermionic one. Quasi-particles obeying such statistics can be described as ordinary bosons and fermions with magnetic interactions. We study a limit situation where the statistics/magnetic interaction is seen as a "perturbation from the fermionic end". We vindicate a mean-field approximation, proving that the ground state of a gas of anyons is described to leading order by a semi-classical, Vlasov-like, energy functional. The ground state of the latter displays anyonic…
A method for creation of ultracold molecules by stepwise adiabatic passage from the Feshbach state to the fundamentally ground state using an optical frequency comb is presented within a semiclassical multilevel model. The sinusoidal modulation of the spectral phase of the comb is implemented that leads to a creation of a quasi-dark dressed state having an insignificant population of the excited state manifold and, thus, efficiently mitigating decoherence in the system. In contrast, the cosine modulation does not lead to the quasi-dark state formation. The results demonstrate the importance of…
We find that a donor-doped band-gap material can enhance the overall high-order harmonic generation (HHG) efficiency by several orders of magnitude, compared with undoped and acceptor-doped materials. This significant enhancement, predicted by time-dependent density functional theory simulations, originates from the highest-occupied impurity state which has an isolated energy located within the band gap. The impurity-state HHG is rationalized by a three-step model, taking into account that the impurity-state electron tunnels into the conduction band and then moves according to its band structu…
