We introduce an analytical solution to the one of the most familiar problems from the elementary quantum mechanics textbooks. The following discussion provides simple illustrations to a number of general concepts of quantum chaology, along with some recent developments in the field and a historical perspective on the subject.
A simple experiment using radioactive decay is proposed to test the possibility of a determinsistic, but chaotic, origin of quantum mechanical randomness.
We suggest how to construct non-perturbatively a renormalized action in quantum mechanics. We discuss similarties and differences with the standard effective action. We propose that the new quantum action is suitable to define and compute quantum instantons and quantum chaos.
Simple theorems relating a quantum mechanical system to the corresponding classical one at equilibrium and connecting the quantum eigenvalues to the frequencies of normal modes oscillations are presented. Corresponding to each quantum eigenfunction, a ` classical eigenfunction' is associated. Those belonging to `elementary excitations' play an important role.
We discuss the main mechanisms generating chaotic behavior of the quantum trajectories in the de Broglie - Bohm picture of quantum mechanics, in systems of two and three degrees of freedom. In the 2D case, chaos is generated via multiple scatterings of the trajectories with one or more `nodal point - X-point complexes'. In the 3D case, these complexes form foliations along `nodal lines' accompanied by `X-lines'. We also identify cases of integrable or partially integrable quantum trajectories. The role of chaos is important in interpreting the dynamical origin of the `quantum relaxation' effec…
Some of the so-called imponderables and counterintuitive puzzles associated with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics appear to have alternate, parallel explanations in terms of nonlinear dynamics and chaos. These include the mocking up of exponetial decay in closed systems, possible nonlinear extensions of Bell's inequalities, spontaneous symmetry breaking and the existence of intrinsically preferred internal oscillation modes (quantization) in nonlinear systems, and perhaps even the production of diffraction-like patterns by "order in chaos." The existence of such parallel expl…
Paper I of this series introduced a nonlinear version of quantum mechanics that blocks cats, and paper II postulated a random part of the wavefunction to explain outcomes in experiments such as Stern-Gerlach or EPRB. However, an ad hoc extra parameter was assumed for the randomness. Here I provide some analytic and simulation evidence that the nonlinear theory exhibits sensitive dependence on initial conditions in measurement scenarios, perhaps implying that the magnitude of randomness required is determined by structural features of the model, and does not require a free parameter.
This is a short review in the theory of chaos in Bohmian Quantum Mechanics based on our series of works in this field. Our first result is the development of a generic theoretical mechanism responsible for the generation of chaos in an arbitrary Bohmian system (in 2 and 3 dimensions). This mechanism allows us to explore the effect of chaos on Bohmian trajectories and study in detail (both analytically and numerically) the different kinds of Bohmian trajectories where, in general, chaos and order coexist. Finally we explore the effect of quantum entanglement on the evolution of the Bohmian traj…
With the decline of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and the recent experiments indicating that quantum mechanics does actually embody 'objective reality', one might ask if a 'mechanical', conceptual model for quantum mechanics could be found. We propose such a model. Vacuum energy fluctuations imply mass fluctuations and, through general relativity, curvature fluctuations. And those fluctuations are indicated by fluctuations of the metric tensor. The metric tensor fluctuations can 'explain' the uncertainty relations and non-commuting properties of conjugate variables. We arg…
In recent years, analysis and control of quantum chaos are increasingly important, but the lack of the concept of trajectory makes it impossible to analyze quantum chaos by the methods used in classical chaos. This research aims to connect Newton's world to the quantum world by the complex mechanics so that quantum chaos can be analyzed and controlled by the complex-extended Newtonian mechanics. Through the bridge of complex mechanics, in this article, we model quantum motions for 2D charged anisotropic harmonic oscillator by complex-valued dynamic equations, based on which quantum chaos can b…
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 i…
A new quantum mechanical description of the dynamics of wave packet under continuous measurement is formulated via Bohmian mechanics. The solution to this equation is found through a wave packet approach which establishes a direct correlation between a classical variable with a quantum variable describing the dynamics of the center of mass and the width of the wave packet. The approach presented in this paper gives a comparatively clearer picture than approaches using restrited path integrals and master equation approaches. This work shows how the extremely irregular character of classical cha…
We consider the quantum-classical correspondence from a classical perspective by discussing the potential for chaotic systems to support behaviors normally associated with quantum mechanical systems. Our main analytical tool is a chaotic system's set of cupolets, which are essentially highly-accurate stabilizations of its unstable periodic orbits. The discussion is motivated by the bound or entangled states that we have recently detected between interacting chaotic systems, wherein pairs of cupolets are induced into a state of mutually-sustaining stabilization that can be maintained without ex…
In quantum theory, symmetry has to be defined necessarily in terms of the family of unit rays, the state space. The theorem of Wigner asserts that a symmetry so defined at the level of rays can always be lifted into a linear unitary or an antilinear antiunitary operator acting on the underlying Hilbert space. We present a proof of this theorem which is both elementary and economical. Central to our proof is the recognition that a given Wigner symmetry can, by post-multiplication by a unitary symmetry, be taken into either the identity or complex conjugation. Our analysis involves a judicious i…
Studies of quantum fields and gravity suggest the existence of a minimal length, such as Planck length \cite{Floratos,Kempf}. It is natural to ask how the existence of a minimal length may modify the results in elementary quantum mechanics (QM) problems familiar to us \cite{Gasiorowicz}. In this paper we address a simple problem from elementary non-relativistic quantum mechanics, called "particle in a box", where the usual continuum (1+1)-space-time is supplanted by a space-time lattice. Our lattice consists of a grid of $λ_0 \times τ_0 $ rectangles, where $λ_0$, the lattice parameter, is a fu…
A new formulation of the theory of quantum mechanical multichannel scattering for three-body collinear systems is proposed. It is shown, that in this simple case the principle of quantum determinism in the general case breaks down and we have a micro-irreversible quantum mechanics. The first principle calculations of the quantum chaos (wave chaos) were pursued on the example of an elementary chemical reaction Li+(FH)->(LiFH)*->(LiF)+H.
Bohmian mechanics is a causal interpretation of quantum mechanics in which particles describe trajectories guided by the wave function. The dynamics in the vicinity of nodes of the wave function, usually called vortices, is regular if they are at rest. However, vortices generically move during time evolution of the system. We show that this movement is the origin of chaotic behavior of quantum trajectories. As an example, our general result is illustrated numerically in the two-dimensional isotropic harmonic oscillator.
We discuss the recently proposed quantum action - its interpretation, its motivation, its mathematical properties and its use in physics: quantum mechanical tunneling, quantum instantons and quantum chaos.
The aim of this paper is to review the classical limit of Quantum Mechanics and to precise the well known threat of chaos (and fundamental graininess)to the correspondence principle. We will introduce a formalism for this classical limit that allows us to find the surfaces defined by the constants of the motion in phase space. Then in the integrable case we will find the classical trajectories, and in the non-integrable one the fact that regular initial cells become "amoeboid-like". This deformations and their consequences can be considered as a threat to the correspondence principle unless we…
We illustrate some of the techniques to identify chaos signatures at the quantum level using as a guiding examples some systems where a particle is constrained to move on a radial symmetric, but non planar, surface. In particular, two systems are studied: the case of a cone with an arbitrary contour or dunce hat billiard and the rectangular billiard with an inner Gaussian surface.
The effect of introducing measuring devices in a ``quantum pinball'' system is shown to lead to a chaotic evolution for the particle position as defined in Bohm's approach to Quantum Mechanics.
We propose a new diagnostic for quantum chaos. We show that time evolution of complexity for a particular type of target state can provide equivalent information about the classical Lyapunov exponent and scrambling time as out-of-time-order correlators. Moreover, for systems that can be switched from a regular to unstable (chaotic) regime by a tuning of the coupling constant of the interaction Hamiltonian, we find that the complexity defines a new time scale. We interpret this time scale as recording when the system makes the transition from regular to chaotic behaviour.
Actual realisations of EPR experiments do {\em not} demonstrate non-locality. A model is presented that should enable non-specialists as well as specialists to understand how easy it is to find realistic explanations for the observations. The model also suggests new areas where realistic (``hidden-variable'') models can give valid predictions whilst quantum mechanics fails. It offers straightforward explanations for some anomalies that Aspect was unable to account for, providing perhaps the first experimental evidence that a hidden-variable theory can be {\em superior} to quantum mechanics. Th…
The traditional Standard Quantum Mechanics is unable to solve the Spin-Statistics problem, i.e. to justify the utterly important Pauli Exclusion Principle. We show that this is due to the non completeness of the standard theory due to an arguable conception of the spin as a vector characterizing the rotational properties of the elementary particles. The present Article presents a complete and straightforward solution of the Spin-Statistics problem on the basis of the Conformal Quantum Geometrodynamics, a theory that has been proved to reproduce successfully all relevant processes of the Standa…
We discuss a mechanical model which mimics the main features of the radiation matter interaction in the black body problem. The pure classical dynamical evolution, with a simple discretization of the action variables, leads to the Stefan- Boltzmann law and to the Planck distribution without any additional statistical assumption.
Quantum chaos is presented as a paradigm of information processing by dynamical systems at the bottom of the range of phase-space scales. Starting with a brief review of classical chaos as entropy flow from micro- to macro-scales, I argue that quantum chaos came as an indispensable rectification, removing inconsistencies related to entropy in classical chaos: Bottom-up information currents require an inexhaustible entropy production and a diverging information density in phase space, reminiscent of Gibbs' paradox in Statistical Mechanics. It is shown how a mere discretization of the state spac…
This paper suggests a new way to compute the path integral for simple quantum mechanical systems. The new algorithm originated from previous research in string theory. However, its essential simplicity is best illustrated in the case of a free non relativistic particle, discussed here, and can be appreciated by most students taking an introductory course in Quantum Mechanics. Indeed, the emphasis is on the role played by the {\it entire family of classical trajectories} in terms of which the path integral is computed exactly using a functional representation of the Dirac delta-distribution. We…
We address the issue of the quantum-classical correspondence in chaotic systems using, as recently done by Zurek [e-print quant-ph/9802054], the solar system as a whole as a case study: this author shows that the classicality of the planetary motion is ensured by the environment-induced decoherence. We show that equivalent results are provided by the theories of spontaneous fluctuations and that these latter theories, in some cases, result in a still faster process of decoherence. We show that, as an additional benefit, the assumption of spontaneous fluctuation makes it possible to genuinely d…
It is usual to identify initial conditions of classical dynamical systems with mathematical real numbers. However, almost all real numbers contain an infinite amount of information. I argue that a finite volume of space can't contain more than a finite amount of information, hence that the mathematical real numbers are not physically relevant. Moreover, a better terminology for the so-called real numbers is ``random numbers'', as their series of bits are truly random. I propose an alternative classical mechanics, which is empirically equivalent to classical mechanics, but uses only finite-info…
We establish the emergence of chaotic motion in optomechanical systems. Chaos appears at negative detuning for experimentally accessible values of the pump power and other system parameters. We describe the sequence of period doubling bifurcations that leads to chaos, and state the experimentally observable signatures in the optical spectrum. In addition to the semi-classical dynamics we analyze the possibility of chaotic motion in the quantum regime. We find that quantum mechanics protects the optomechanical system against irregular dynamics, such that simple periodic orbits reappear and repl…
In this paper we suggest a formulation that would bear out the spirit of Prigogine's "Order Out of Chaos" and Wheeler's "Law Without Law". In it a typical elementary particle length, namely the pion Compton wavelength arises from the random motion of the N particles in the universe of dimension R. It is then argued in the light of recent work that this is the origin of the laws of physics and leads to a cosmology consistent with observation.
In classical mechanics the local exponential instability effaces the memory of initial conditions and leads to practical irreversibility. In striking contrast, quantum mechanics appears to exhibit strong memory of the initial state. We relate the latter fact to the low (at most linear) rate with which the system's Wigner function gets during evolution more and more complicated structure and establish existence of a critical strength of external influence below which such a memory still survives.
Complex techniques of general relativity are used to determine \emph{all} the states in the two and three dimensional momentum spaces in which the equality holds in the uncertainty relations for the non-commuting basic observables of Euclidean invariant elementary quantum mechanical systems, even with non-zero intrinsic spin. It is shown that while there is a 1-parameter family of such states for any two components of the angular momentum vector operator with any angle between them, such states exist for a component of the linear and angular momenta \emph{only if} these components are orthogon…
Formulations of magnetic monopoles in a Hilbert-space formulation of quantum mechanics require Dirac's quantization condition of magnetic charge, which implies a large value that can easily be ruled out for elementary particles by standard atomic spectroscopy. However, an algebraic formulation of non-associative quantum mechanics is mathematically consistent with fractional magnetic charges of small values. Here, spectral properties in non-associative quantum mechanics are derived, applied to the ground state of hydrogen with a magnetically charged nucleus. The resulting energy leads to new st…
Every system in physics is described in terms of interacting elementary particles characterized by modulated spacetime recurrences. These intrinsic periodicities, implicit in undulatory mechanics, imply that every free particle is a reference clock linking time to the particle's mass, and every system is formalizable by means of modulated elementary spacetime cycles. We propose a novel consistent relativistic formalism based on intrinsically cyclic spacetime dimensions, encoding the quantum recurrences of elementary particles into spacetime geometrodynamics. The advantage of the resulting theo…
The physical consequences of the analysis performed in Parts I-IV are outlined within a scheme of the complete quantum (wave) mechanics called quantum field mechanics and completing the original ideas of Louis de Broglie by the dynamic complexity concept. The total picture includes the formally complete description at the level of the "average" wave function of Schroedinger type that shows dynamically chaotic behaviour in the form of either quantum chaos (Parts I-III), or quantum measurement (Part IV) with causal indeterminacy and wave reduction. This level is only an approximation, though oft…
We study numerically and analytically the time dependence and saturation of out-of-time ordered correlators (OTOC) in chaotic few-body quantum-mechanical systems: quantum Henon-Heiles system (weakly chaotic), BMN matrix quantum mechanics (strongly chaotic) and Gaussian random matrix ensembles. The growth pattern of quantum-mechanical OTOC is complex and nonuniversal, with no clear exponential regime at relevant timescales in any of the examples studied (which is not in contradiction to the exponential growth found in the literature for many-body systems, i.e. fields). On the other hand, the pl…
We map Spekkens' toy model to a quantum mechanics defined over the finite field $\mathbb{F}_5$. This allows us to define arbitrary linear combinations of the epistemic states in the model. For Spekkens' elementary system with only $2^2=4$ ontic states, the mapping is exact and the two models agree completely. However, for a pair of elementary systems there exist interesting differences between the entangled states of the two models.
We show the relation between the Heisenberg averaging of regularized 2-point out-of-time ordered correlation function and the 2-point spectral form factor in bosonic quantum mechanics. The generalization to all even-point is also discussed. We also do the direct extension from the bosonic quantum mechanics to the non-interacting scalar field theory. Finally, we find that the coherent state and large-$N$ approaches are useful in the late-time study. We find that the computation of the coherent state can be simplified by the Heisenberg averaging. Therefore, this provides a simplified way to prob…
The spin geometry theorem of Penrose is extended from $SU(2)$ to $E(3)$ (Euclidean) invariant elementary quantum mechanical systems. Using the natural decomposition of the total angular momentum into its spin and orbital parts, the \emph{distance} between the centre-of-mass lines of the elementary subsystems of a classical composite system can be recovered from their \emph{relative orbital angular momenta} by $E(3)$-invariant classical observables. Motivated by this observation, an expression for the `empirical distance' between the elementary subsystems of a \emph{composite quantum mechanical…
The true dynamical randomness is obtained as a natural fundamental property of deterministic quantum systems. It provides quantum chaos passing to the classical dynamical chaos under the ordinary semiclassical transition, which extends the correspondence principle to chaotic systems. In return one should accept the modified form of quantum formalism (presented by the Schroedinger equation) which, however, does not contradict the ordinary form and the main postulates of quantum mechanics. It introduces the principle of the fundamental dynamic multivaluedness (redundance) extending the quantum p…
The intrinsic multivaluedness of interaction process, revealed in Part I of this series of papers, is interpreted as the origin of the true dynamical (in particular, quantum) chaos. The latter is causally deduced as unceasing series of transitions, dynamically probabilistic by their origin, between the equally real, but incompatible 'realisations' (modes of interaction) of a system. The obtained set of realisations form the causally derived, intrinsically complete "space of events" providing the crucial extension of the notion of probability and the method of its first-principle calculation. T…
Two particles that are just shy of binding may develop an infinite number of shallow bound states when a third particle is added. This counter intuitive quantum mechanical result was first predicted by V. Efimov for identical bosons interacting with a short-range pair-wise potential. The so-called Efimov effect persists even for non-identical particles, provided at least two of the three bonds are almost bound. The Efimov effect has recently been verified experimentally using ultra-cold atoms. In this article, we explain the origin of this effect using only elementary quantum mechanics, and su…
This review gives a pedagogical introduction to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), its basis, and its implications to statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. In the first part, ETH is introduced as a natural extension of ideas from quantum chaos and random matrix theory (RMT). To this end, we present a brief overview of classical and quantum chaos, as well as RMT and some of its most important predictions. The latter include the statistics of energy levels, eigenstate components, and matrix elements of observables. Building on these, we introduce the ETH and show that it allows …
It is shown using numerical simulation that classical charged tachyons have several features normally thought to be unique to quantum mechanics. Spin-like self-orbiting helical motions are shown to exist at discrete values for the velocity of the tachyon in Feynman-Wheeler electrodynamics and in normal causal electrodynamics more complex closed orbits also appear to exist. Tunneling behavior of the classical tachyon is observed at classical turning points depending on the angle of incidence. The equations of motion appear to be chaotic and effectively indeterministic when the tachyon crosses i…
The main idea of "Quantum Chaos" studies is that Quantum Mechanics introduces two energy scales into the study of chaotic systems: One is obviously the mean level spacing $Δ\propto\hbar^d$, where $d$ is the dimensionality; The other is $Δ_b\propto\hbar$, which is known as the non-universal energy scale, or as the bandwidth, or as the Thouless energy. Associated with these two energy scales are two special quantum-mechanical (QM) regimes in the theory of driven system. These are the QM adiabatic regime, and the QM non-perturbative regime respectively. Otherwise Fermi golden rule applies, and li…
We shortly review the progress in the domain of deterministic chaos for quantum dynamical systems. With the appropriately extended definition of quantum Lyapunov exponent we analyze various quantum dynamical maps. It is argued that, within Quantum Mechanics, irregular evolution for properly chosen observables can coexist with regular and predictable evolution of states.