The momentum changes caused by position measurements are a central feature of wave-particle duality. Here we investigate two cases - localization by a single slit, and which-way detection in the double-slit interference experiment - and examine in detail the associated momentum changes. Particular attention is given to the transfer of momentum between particle and detector, and the recoil of the measuring device. We find that single-slit diffraction relies on a form of `interaction-free' scattering, and that an ideal which-way measurement can be made without any back-reaction on the detector.
We investigate the long-time limit of quantum localization of the kicked Rydberg atom. The kicked Rydberg atom is shown to possess in addition to the quantum localization time $τ_L$ a second cross-over time $t_D$ where quantum dynamics diverges from classical dynamics towards increased instability. The quantum localization is shown to vanish as either the strength of the kicks at fixed principal quantum number or the quantum number at fixed kick strength increases. The survival probability as a function of frequency in the transient localization regime $τ_L<t<t_D$ is characterized by highly ir…
We study a system of two coupled kicked rotors, both classically and quantum mechanically, for a wide range of coupling parameters. This was motivated by two published reports, one of which reported quantum localization, while the other reported diffusion. The classical systems are chaotic, and exhibit normal diffusive behavior. In the quantum systems, we found different regimes, depending on the strength of the coupling. For weak coupling, we found quantum localization similar to that exhibited by single kicked rotors. For strong coupling, we found a quasi-diffusive growth of the width of the…
We present a theoretical and numerical study of the competition between two opposite interference effects, namely interference-induced ballistic transport on one hand, and strong (Anderson) localization on the other. While the former effect allows for resistance free transport, the latter brings the transport to a complete halt. As a model system, we consider the quantum kicked rotor, where strong localization is observed in the discrete momentum coordinate. In this model, we introduce the ballistic transport in the form of a Hadamard quantum walk in that momentum coordinate. The two transport…
We consider classical models of the kicked rotor type, with piecewise linear kicking potentials designed so that momentum changes only by multiples of a given constant. Their dynamics display quasi-localization of momentum, or quadratic growth of energy, depending on the arithmetic nature of the constant. Such purely classical features mimic paradigmatic features of the {\it quantum} kicked rotor, notably dynamical localization in momentum, or quantum resonances. We present a heuristic explanation, based on a classical phase space generalization of a well known argument, that maps the quantum …
There has been an intense debate on the question as to whether a quanton, passing through a double-slit, experiences a 'momentum kick' due to the act of which-way detection. There have been conflicting points of view on this issue over many decades. This issue is addressed here in the general setting where the which-way detection may be imperfect. It is shown here that the loss of interference may still be interpreted as arising out of tiny momentum kicks which the quanton appears to receive, irrespective of the nature of the which-way detector. Interestingly, the magnitude of the random momen…
We observe and study the phenomenon of Anderson localization in a system of true quantum kicked rotors. Nitrogen molecules in a supersonic molecular jet are cooled down to 27~K and are rotationally excited by a periodic train of 24~high-intensity femtosecond pulses. Exponential distribution of the molecular angular momentum - the most unambiguous signature of Anderson localization - is measured directly by means of coherent Raman scattering. We demonstrate the suppressed growth of the molecular rotational energy with the number of laser kicks and study the dependence of the localization length…
The influence of an initial momentum on the appearance of "quantum resonances" in the delta-kicked rotor system is explored experimentally. We show that for certain initial momenta, a resonance can be negated entirely, whereas at others a resonance can be made to appear. At a larger number of kicks, all resonances are shown to narrow. We show that as a consequence, the individual "diffraction peaks" may split. We compare our results to numerical simulations as well as analytical theory.
We report the experimental observation of rectified momentum transport for a Bose-Einstein Condensate kicked at the Talbot time (quantum resonance) by an optical standing wave. Atoms are initially prepared in a superposition of the 0 and -2*hbar*kl momentum states using an optical pi/2 pulse. By changing the relative phase of the superposed states, a momentum current in either direction along the standing wave may be produced. We offer an interpretation based on matter wave interference, showing that the observed effect is uniquely quantum.
We consider wave transport phenomena in a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric extension of the periodically-kicked quantum rotator model and reveal that dynamical localization assists the unbroken $\mathcal{PT}$ phase. In the delocalized (quantum resonance) regime, $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry is always in the broken phase and ratchet acceleration arises as a signature of unidirectional non-Hermitian transport. An optical implementation of the periodically-kicked $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric Hamiltonian, based on transverse beam propagation in a passive optical resonator with combined phase and loss gratings, is …
The kicked rotor system is a textbook example of how classical and quantum dynamics can drastically differ. The energy of a classical particle confined to a ring and kicked periodically will increase linearly in time whereas in the quantum version the energy saturates after a finite number of kicks. The quantum system undergoes Anderson localization in the angular-momentum space. Conventional wisdom says that in a many-particle system with short-range interactions the localization will be destroyed due to the coupling of widely separated momentum states. Here we provide evidence that for an in…
Two-slit interference experiment with a which-way detector has been a topic of intense debate. Scientific community is divided on the question whether the particle receives a momentum kick because of the process of which-way measurement. It is shown here that the same experiment can be viewed in two different ways, depending on which basis of the which-way detector states one chooses to look at. In one view, the loss of interference arises due to the entanglement of the two paths of the particle with two orthogonal states of the which-way detector. In another view, the loss of interference can…
Edge localization is a fascinating quantum phenomenon. In this paper, the underlying mechanism generating it is presented analytically and verified numerically for a weakly kicked three-dimensional rotor. Analogy to tight binding model in solid state physics is used. The edge states result of the edge at zero angular momentum of the three-dimensional kicked rotor.
We experimentally study a system of quantum kicked rotors - an ensemble of diatomic molecules exposed to a periodic sequence of ultrashort laser pulses. In the regime, where the underlying classical dynamics is chaotic, we investigate the quantum phenomenon of dynamical localization by means of state-resolved coherent Raman spectroscopy. We examine the dependence of the exponentially localized angular momentum distribution and of the total rotational energy on the time period between the pulses and their amplitude. The former parameter is shown to provide control over the localization center, …
We study experimentally a quantum kicked rotor with broken parity symmetry, supporting a ratchet effect due to the presence of a classical accelerator mode. We show that the short-time dynamics is very well described by the classical dynamics, characterized by a strongly asymmetric momentum distribution with directed motion on one side, and an anomalous diffusion on the other. At longer times, quantum effects lead to dynamical localization, causing an asymptotic resymmetrization of the wave function.
We review our recent works on the dynamical localization in the quantum kicked rotator (QKR) and the related properties of the classical kicked rotator (the standard map, SM). We introduce the Izrailev $N$-dimensional model of the QKR and analyze the localization properties of the Floquet eigenstates [{\em Phys. Rev. E} {\bf 87}, 062905 (2013)], and the statistical properties of the quasienergy spectra. We survey normal and anomalous diffusion in the SM, and the related accelerator modes [{\em Phys. Rev. E} {\bf 89}, 022905 (2014)]. We analyze the statistical properties [{\em Phys. Rev. E} {\b…
We investigate the quantum-classical transition in the delta-kicked rotor and the attainment of the classical limit in terms of measurement-induced state-localization. It is possible to study the transition by fixing the environmentally induced disturbance at a sufficiently small value, and examining the dynamics as the system is made more macroscopic. When the system action is relatively small, the dynamics is quantum mechanical and when the system action is sufficiently large there is a transition to classical behavior. The dynamics of the rotor in the region of transition, characterized by …
We investigate the quantum irreversibility and quantum diffusion in a non-Hermitian kicked rotor model for which the kicking strength is complex. Our results show that the exponential decay of Loschmidt echo gradually disappears with increasing the strength of the imaginary part of non-Hermitian driven potential, demonstrating the suppress of the exponential instability by non-Hermiticity. The quantum diffusion exhibits the dynamical localization in momentum space, namely, the mean square of momentum increases to saturation with time evolution, which decreases with the increase of the strength…
Quantum interference can terminate energy growth in a continually kicked system, via a single-particle ergodicity-breaking mechanism known as dynamical localization. The effect of many-body interactions on dynamically localized states, while important to a fundamental understanding of quantum decoherence, has remained unexplored despite a quarter-century of experimental studies. We report the experimental realization of a tunably-interacting kicked quantum rotor ensemble using a Bose-Einstein condensate in a pulsed optical lattice. We observe signatures of a prethermal localized plateau, follo…
We present a quantum localization phenomenon that exists in periodically kicked 3D rotors, but is absent in the commonly studied 2D ones: edge localization. We show that under the condition of a fractional quantum resonance there are states of the kicked rotor that are strongly localized near the edge of the angular momentum space at $J=0$. These states are analogs of surface states in crystalline solids, and they significantly affect resonant excitation of molecular rotation by laser pulse trains.
We present experimental measurements of the mean energy for the atom optics kicked rotor after just two kicks. The energy is found to deviate from the quasi--linear value for small kicking periods. The observed deviation is explained by recent theoretical results which include the effect of a non--uniform initial momentum distribution, previously applied only to systems using much colder atoms than ours.
We examine the effect of the initial atomic momentum distribution on the dynamics of the atom-optical realisation of the quantum kicked rotor. The atoms are kicked by a pulsed optical lattice, the periodicity of which implies that quasi-momentum is conserved in the transport problem. We study and compare experimentally and theoretically two resonant limits of the kicked rotor: in the vicinity of the quantum resonances and in the semiclassical limit of vanishing kicking period. It is found that for the same experimental distribution of quasi-momenta, significant deviations from the kicked rotor…
We study the quantum kicked rotator in the classically fully chaotic regime $K=10$ and for various values of the quantum parameter $k$ using Izrailev's $N$-dimensional model for various $N \le 3000$, which in the limit $N \rightarrow \infty$ tends to the exact quantized kicked rotator. By numerically calculating the eigenfunctions in the basis of the angular momentum we find that the localization length ${\cal L}$ for fixed parameter values has a certain distribution, in fact its inverse is Gaussian distributed, in analogy and in connection with the distribution of finite time Lyapunov exponen…
We investigate the quantum kicked rotor in resonance subjected to momentum measurements with a Lévy waiting time distribution. We find that the system has a sub-ballistic behavior. We obtain an analytical expression for the exponent of the power law of the variance as a function of the characteristic parameter of the Lévy distribution and connect this anomalous diffusion with a fractional dynamics.
We study the effect of many-body quantum interference on the dynamics of coupled periodically kicked systems whose classical dynamics is chaotic and shows an unbounded energy increase. We specifically focus on a $N$ coupled kicked rotors model: we find that the interplay of quantumness and interactions dramatically modifies the system dynamics inducing a transition between energy saturation and unbounded energy increase. We discuss this phenomenon both numerically and analytically, through a mapping onto a $N$-dimensional Anderson model. The thermodynamic limit $N\to\infty$, in particular, alw…
The quantum kicked rotor is well-known to display dynamical localization in the non-interacting limit. In the interacting case, while the mean-field (Gross-Pitaevskii) approximation displays a destruction of dynamical localization, its fate remains debated beyond mean-field. Here we study the kicked Lieb-Liniger model in the few-body limit. We show that for any interaction strength, two kicked interacting bosons always dynamically localize, in the sense that the energy of the system saturates at long time. However, contrary to the non-interacting limit, the momentum distribution $Π(k)$ of the …
We numerically study the quantum dynamics of a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric kicked harmonic oscillator. We observe that directed current of momentum and ballistic diffusion of energy coexist under the non-resonant conditions, whereas both the momentum and energy oscillate as damped cosine functions with identical frequencies under the resonant conditions. The research shows that the directed current of momentum and ballistic diffusion of energy arise from nearest-neighbor hopping between momentum eigenstates with the non-Hermitian driving, while the damped oscillations of momentum and energy origi…
Multifractal states offer a "third way" for quantum matter, neither fully localized nor ergodic, exhibiting singular continuous spectra, self-similar wavefunctions, and transport and entanglement scaling exponents intermediate between extended and localized states. While multifractality in equilibrium systems generally requires fine-tuning to a critical point, externally driven quantum matter can exhibit multifractal states with no equilibrium counterpart. We report the experimental observation of multifractal matter and anomalous localization in a kicked Aubry-André-Harper quasicrystal. Our c…
We investigate decoherence in the quantum kicked rotator (modelling cold atoms in a pulsed optical field) subjected to noise with power-law tail waiting-time distributions of variable exponent (Levy noise). We demonstrate the existence of a regime of nonexponential decoherence where the notion of a decoherence rate is ill-defined. In this regime, dynamical localization is never fully destroyed, indicating that the dynamics of the quantum system never reaches the classical limit. We show that this leads to quantum subdiffusion of the momentum, which should be observable in an experiment.
Control over the quantum dynamics of chaotic kicked rotor systems is demonstrated. Specifically, control over a number of quantum coherent phenomena is achieved by a simple modification of the kicking field. These include the enhancement of the dynamical localization length, the introduction of classical anomalous diffusion assisted control for systems far from the semiclassical regime, and the observation of a variety of strongly nonexponential lineshapes for dynamical localization. The results provide excellent examples of controlled quantum dynamics in a system that is classically chaotic a…
A kick from a unipolar half-cycle pulse (HCP) can redistribute population and shift the relative phase between states in a radial Rydberg wave packet. We have measured the quantum coherence properties following the kick, and show that selected coherences can be destroyed by applying an HCP at specific times. Quantum mechanical simulations show that this is due to redistribution of the angular momentum in the presence of noise. These results have implications for the storage and retrieval of quantum information in the wave packet.
We experimentally investigate the effects of phase noise on the resonant and non-resonant dynamics of the atom-optics kicked rotor. Employing sinusoidal phase modulation at various frequencies, resonances are found corresponding to periodic phase shifts, resulting in the effective transformation of quantum anti-resonances into resonances and vice-versa. The stability of the resonance is analysed, with the aid of experiments, epsilon-classical theory and numerical simulations, and is found to be surprisingly robust against phase noise. Finally we look into the effects of phase noise on dynamica…
We investigate the directed momentum current in the quantum kicked rotor model with $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetric deriving potential. For the quantum non-resonance case, the values of quasi-energy become to be complex when the strength of imaginary part of the kicking potential exceeds \textbf{a} threshold value, which demonstrates the appearance of the spontaneous $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry breaking. In the vicinity of the phase-transition point, the momentum current exhibits a staircase growth with time. Each platform of the momentum current corresponds to the mean momentum of some eigenstates of th…
We describe a method allowing transient suppression of decoherence effects on the atom-optics realization of the kicked rotor. The system is prepared in an initial state with a momentum distribution concentrated in an interval much sharper than the Brillouin zone; the measure of the momentum distribution is restricted to this interval of quasimomenta: As most of the atoms undergoing decoherence processes fall outside this detection range and thus are not detected, the measured signal is effectively decoherence-free.
The study of quantum resonances in the chaotic atom-optics kicked rotor system is of interest from two different perspectives. In quantum chaos, it marks out the regime of resonant quantum dynamics in which the atomic cloud displays ballistic mean energy growth due to coherent momentum transfer. Secondly, the sharp quantum resonance peaks are useful in the context of measurement of Talbot time, one of the parameter that helps in precise measurement of fine structure constant. Most of the earlier works rely on fidelity based approach and have proposed Talbot time measurement through experimenta…
We consider the quantum counterpart of the kicked harmonic oscillator showing that it undergoes the effect of delocalization in momentum when the classical diffusional threshold is obeyed. For this case the ratio between the oscillator frequency and the frequency of the kick is a rational number, strictly in analogy with the classical case that does not obey the Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser theorem as the unperturbed motion is degenerate. A tight-binding formulation is derived showing that there is not delocalization in momentum for irrational ratio of the above frequencies. In this way, it is stra…
The angle coordinate of the Quantum Kicked Rotator problem is treated as if it were an extended coordinate. A new mechanism for destruction of coherence by noise is analyzed using both heuristic and formal approach. Its effectiveness constitutes a manifestation of long-range non-trivial dynamical correlations. Perturbation theory fails to quantify certain aspects of this effect. In the perturbative case, for sufficiently weak noise, the diffusion coefficient ${\cal D}$ is just proportional to the noise intensity $ν$. It is predicted that in some generic cases one may have a non-perturbative de…
We analyze the effects of a nonlinear cubic perturbation on the delta-Kicked Rotor. We consider two different models, in which the nonlinear term acts either in the position or in the momentum representation. We numerically investigate the modifications induced by the nonlinearity in the quantum transport in both localized and resonant regimes and a comparison between the results for the two models is presented. Analyzing the momentum distributions and the increase of the mean square momentum, we find that the quantum resonances asymptotically are very stable with respect to the nonlinear pert…
We review the theoretical model and experimental realization of the atom optics $δ-$kicked rotor (AOKR), a paradigm of classical and quantum chaos. We have performed a number of experiments with an all-optical Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a periodic standing wave potential in an AOKR system. We discuss results of the investigation of the phenomena of quantum resonances in the AOKR. An interesting feature of the momentum distribution of the atoms obtained as a result of short pulses of light, is the variance of the momentum distribution or the kinetic energy $<p^{2}>/2m$ in units of the re…
We study the resonances of the quantum kicked rotor subjected to an extended initial distribution. For the primary resonances we obtain the dispersion relation for the map of this system. We find an analytical dependence of the statistical moments on the shape of the initial distribution. For the secondary resonances we obtain numerically a similar dependence. This allows us to devise an extended initial condition which produces an average angular momentum pointing in a preset direction which increases with time with a preset ratio.
We numerically investigate momentum diffusion rates for the pulse kicked rotor across the quantum to classical transition as the dynamics are made more macroscopic by increasing the total system action. For initial and late time rates we observe an enhanced diffusion peak which shifts and scales with changing kick strength, and we also observe distinctive peaks around quantum resonances. Our investigations take place in the context of a system of ultracold atoms which is coupled to its environment via spontaneous emission decoherence, and the effects should be realisable in ongoing experiments…
The phenomenon of quantum antiresonance (QAR), i.e., exactly periodic recurrences in quantum dynamics, is studied in a large class of nonintegrable systems, the modulated kicked rotors (MKRs). It is shown that asymptotic exponential localization generally occurs for $η$ (a scaled $\hbar$) in the infinitesimal vicinity of QAR points $η_0$. The localization length $ξ_0$ is determined from the analytical properties of the kicking potential. This ``QAR-localization" is associated in some cases with an integrable limit of the corresponding classical systems. The MKR dynamical problem is mapped into…
Double kicked rotors (DKRs) appear to be the simplest nonintegrable Hamiltonian systems featuring classical translational symmetry in phase space (i.e., in angular momentum) for an \emph{infinite} set of values (the rational ones) of a parameter $η$. The experimental realization of quantum DKRs by atom-optics methods motivates the study of the double kicked particle (DKP). The latter reduces, at any fixed value of the conserved quasimomentum $β\hbar$, to a generalized DKR, the \textquotedblleft $β$-DKR\textquotedblright . We determine general quantum properties of $β$-DKRs and DKPs for arbitra…
We present a quantum algorithm which simulates the quantum kicked rotator model exponentially faster than classical algorithms. This shows that important physical problems of quantum chaos, localization and Anderson transition can be modelled efficiently on a quantum computer. We also show that a similar algorithm simulates efficiently classical chaos in certain area-preserving maps.
We study quantum chaos in a non-KAM system, i.e. a kicked particle in a one-dimensional infinite square potential well. Within the perturbative regime the classical phase space displays stochastic web structures, and the diffusion coefficient D in the regime increases with the perturbative strength K giving a scaling $D \propto K^{2.5}$, and in the large K regime D goes as K^2. Quantum mechanically, we observe that the level spacing statistics of the quasi eigenenergies changes from Poisson to Wigner distribution as the kick strength increases. The quasi eigenstates show power-law localization…
Delta kick cooling (DKC) is used to compress the momentum distribution of ultracold quantum matter. It combines expansion dynamics with the use of kick pulses, designed via classical methods, that bring the system to rest. We introduce an exact approach to DKC for arbitrary scale-invariant dynamics of quantum gases, lifting the original restrictions to free evolution and noninteracting systems, to account for the control of atomic clouds in a time-dependent harmonic trap that can be either repulsive (inverted) or confining. We show that DKC assisted by a repulsive potential outperforms the con…
We study numerically the effects of measurements on dynamical localization in the kicked rotator model simulated on a quantum computer. Contrary to the previous studies, which showed that measurements induce a diffusive probability spreading, our results demonstrate that localization can be preserved for repeated single-qubit measurements. We detect a transition from a localized to a delocalized phase, depending on the system parameters and on the choice of the measured qubit.
The quantum kicked rotor (QKR) model is a prototypical system in the research of quantum chaos. In a spin-$1/2$ QKR, tuning the effective Planck parameter realizes a series of transitions between dynamical localization phases, which closely resembles the integer quantum Hall (IQH) effect and the plateau transitions. In this work, we devise and apply the finite-size scaling analysis to the transitions in the spin-$1/2$ QKR model. We obtain an estimate of the critical exponent at the transition point, $ν=2.62(9)$, which is consistent with the IQH plateau transition universality class. We also gi…
The quantum resonances (QRs) of the kicked particle are studied in a most general framework by also considering {\em arbitrary} periodic kicking potentials. It is shown that QR can arise, in general, for {\em any rational} value of the Bloch quasimomentum. This is illustrated in the case of the main QRs for arbitrary potentials. In this case, which is shown to be precisely described by the linear kicked rotor, exact formulas are derived for the diffusion coefficients determining the asymptotic evolution of the average kinetic energy of either an incoherent mixture of plane waves or a general w…
