Dynamical tunnelling between symmetry-related stable modes is studied in the periodically driven pendulum. We present strong evidence that the tunnelling process is governed by nonlinear resonances that manifest within the regular phase-space islands on which the stable modes are localized. By means of a quantitative numerical study of the corresponding Floquet problem, we identify the trace of such resonances not only in the level splittings between near-degenerate quantum states, where they lead to prominent plateau structures, but also in overlap matrix elements of the Floquet eigenstates, which reveal characteristic sequences of avoided crossings in the Floquet spectrum. The semiclassical theory of resonance-assisted tunnelling yields good overall agreement with the quantum-tunnelling rates, and indicates that partial barriers within the chaos might play a prominent role.
We show that a short-range strong repulsive (contact) interaction between the particles in the barrier may change the statistics of two-particle tunnelling. In the case of a resonance of a width $Γ$, the effect would be observed if the time between the two impacts is of order of $\hbar/Γ$. The statistics of non-resonance tunnelling across a broad potential barrier remain unaffected, which suggests that there is no appreciable delay in the classically forbidden region.
Recent experiments with cold atoms provide a significant step toward a better understanding of tunnelling when irregular dynamics is present at the classical level. In this paper, we lay out numerical studies which shed light on the previous experiments, help to clarify the underlying physics and have the ambition to be guidelines for future experiments.
In the large-$N$, classical limit, the Bose-Hubbard dimer undergoes a transition to chaos when its tunnelling rate is modulated in time. We use exact and approximate numerical simulations to determine the features of the dynamically evolving state that are correlated with the presence of chaos in the classical limit. We propose the statistical distance between initially similar number distributions as a reliable measure to distinguish regular from chaotic behaviour in the quantum dynamics. Besides being experimentally accessible, number distributions can be efficiently reconstructed numericall…
A continuous complex rotation of time $t\mapsto t\EXP{-iθ}$ is shown to smooth out the huge fluctuations that characterise chaotic tunnelling. This is illustrated in the kicked rotor model (quantum standard map) where the period of the map is complexified: the associated chaotic classical dynamics, if significant for $θ=0$, is blurred out long before the Wick rotation is completed ($θ=π/2$). The influence of resonances on tunnelling rates weakens exponentially as $θ$ increases from zero, all the more rapidly the sharper the fluctuations. The long range fluctuations can therefore be identified …
The study of the quantum to classical transition is of fundamental as well as technological importance, and focusses on mesoscopic devices, with a size for which either classical physics or quantum physics can be brought to dominate. A particularly diverse selection of such devices is available in cavity quantum-optomechanics. We show that these can be leveraged for the study of dynamical-tunnelling in a quantum chaotic system. This effect probes the quantum to classical transition deeply, since tunnelling rates sensitively depend on the ability of the quantum system to resolve the underlying …
We study the interplay of chaos and tunnelling between two weakly-coupled Bose-Josephson junctions. The classical phase space of the composite system has a mixed structure including quasi-integrable self-trapping islands for particles and excitations, separated by a chaotic sea. We show that the many-body dynamical tunnelling gap between macroscopic Schrödinger cat states supported by these islands is chaos-enhanced. The many-body tunnelling rate fluctuates over several orders of magnitude with small variations of the system parameters or the particle number.
It is well-known that increasing the nonlinearity due to repulsive atomic interactions in a double-well Bose-Einstein condensate suppresses quantum tunnelling between the two sites. Here we find analogous behaviour in the dynamical tunnelling of a Bose-Einstein condensate between period-one resonances in a single driven potential well. For small nonlinearities we find unhindered tunnelling between the resonances, but with an increasing period as compared to the non-interacting system. For nonlinearities above a critical value we generally observe that the tunnelling shuts down. However, for ce…
It is known that under resonance conditions, a group of strongly interacting bosonic atoms, trapped in a double-well potential, mimics a single particle, performing Rabi oscillations between the wells. By implication, all atoms need to tunnel at roughly the same time, even though the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian accounts only for one-atom-at-a-time transfers. We analyse the mechanism of this collective behaviour, evaluate the Rabi frequencies in the process, and discuss the limitation of this simple picture. In particular, is is shown that the small rapid oscillations superimposed on the slow Rabi…
The particle approach to one-dimensional potential scattering is applied to non relativistic tunnelling between two, three and four identical barriers. We demonstrate as expected that the infinite sum of particle contributions yield the plane wave results. In particular, the existence of resonance/transparency for twin tunnelling in the wave limit is immediately obvious. The known resonances for three and four barriers are also derived. The transition from the wave limit to the particle limit is exhibit numerically.
We experimentally show that the response of a quantum-chaotic system can display resonance lines sharper than the inverse of the excitation duration. This allows us to discriminate two neighboring frequencies with a resolution nearly 40 times better than the limit set by the Fourier inequality. Furthermore, numerical studies indicate that there is no limit, but the loss of signal, to this resolution, opening ways for the development of sub-Fourier quantum-chaotic signal processing.
Intense-field ionization of the hydrogen molecular ion by linearly-polarized light is modelled by direct solution of the fixed-nuclei time-dependent Schrödinger equation and compared with recent experiments. Parallel transitions are calculated using algorithms which exploit massively parallel computers. We identify and calculate dynamic tunnelling ionization resonances that depend on laser wavelength and intensity, and molecular bond length. Results for $λ\sim 1064$ nm are consistent with static tunnelling ionization. At shorter wavelengths $λ\sim 790 $ nm large dynamic corrections are observe…
In open chaotic systems the number of long-lived resonance states obeys a fractal Weyl law, which depends on the fractal dimension of the chaotic saddle. We study the generic case of a mixed phase space with regular and chaotic dynamics. We find a hierarchy of fractal Weyl laws, one for each region of the hierarchical decomposition of the chaotic phase-space component. This is based on our observation of hierarchical resonance states localizing on these regions. Numerically this is verified for the standard map and a hierarchical model system.
A hypothesis about the average phase-space distribution of resonance eigenfunctions in chaotic systems with escape through an opening is proposed. Eigenfunctions with decay rate $γ$ are described by a classical measure that $(i)$ is conditionally invariant with classical decay rate $γ$ and $(ii)$ is uniformly distributed on sets with the same temporal distance to the quantum resolved chaotic saddle. This explains the localization of fast-decaying resonance eigenfunctions classically. It is found to occur in the phase-space region having the largest distance to the chaotic saddle. We discuss th…
Centre-of-mass atomic motion in an optical lattice near the resonance is shown to be a chaotic walking due to the interplay between coherent internal atomic dynamics and spontaneous emission. Statistical properties of chaotic atomic motion can be controlled by the single parameter, the detuning between the atomic transition frequency and the laser frequency. We derive a Fokker-Planck equation in the energetic space to describe the atomic transport near the resonance and demonstrate numerically how to manipulate the atomic motion varying the detuning.
Chaotic eigenstates of quantum systems are known to localize on either side of a classical partial transport barrier if the flux connecting the two sides is quantum mechanically not resolved due to Heisenberg's uncertainty. Surprisingly, in open systems with escape chaotic resonance states can localize even if the flux is quantum mechanically resolved. We explain this using the concept of conditionally invariant measures from classical dynamical systems by introducing a new quantum mechanically relevant class of such fractal measures. We numerically find quantum-to-classical correspondence for…
Distributions of eigenmodes are widely concerned in both bounded and open systems. In the realm of chaos, counting resonances can characterize the underlying dynamics (regular vs. chaotic), and is often instrumental to identify classical-to-quantum correspondence. Here, we study, both theoretically and experimentally, the statistics of chaotic resonances in an optical microcavity with a mixed phase space of both regular and chaotic dynamics. Information on the number of chaotic modes is extracted by counting regular modes, which couple to the former via dynamical tunneling. The experimental da…
In this letter, we demonstrate that a non-Hermitian Random Matrix description can account for both spectral and spatial statistics of resonance states in a weakly open chaotic wave system with continuously distributed losses. More specifically, the statistics of resonance states in an open 2D chaotic microwave cavity are investigated by solving the Maxwell equations with lossy boundaries subject to Ohmic dissipation. We successfully compare the statistics of its complex-valued resonance states and associated widths with analytical predictions based on a non-Hermitian effective Hamiltonian mode…
We derive a prediction of dynamical tunneling rates from regular to chaotic phase-space regions combining the direct regular-to-chaotic tunneling mechanism in the quantum regime with an improved resonance-assisted tunneling theory in the semiclassical regime. We give a qualitative recipe for identifying the relevance of nonlinear resonances in a given $\hbar$-regime. For systems with one or multiple dominant resonances we find excellent agreement to numerics.
Complex quantum systems consisting of large numbers of strongly coupled states exhibit characteristic level repulsion, leading to a non-Poisson spacing distribution which can be described by Random Matrix Theory. Scattering resonances observed in ultracold atomic and molecular systems exhibit similar features as a consequence of their energy level structure. We study how the overlap between Feshbach resonances affects the distribution of resonance spacings. The spectrum of strongly overlapping resonances turns out to be non-Poisson even when the assumptions of Random Matrix Theory are not fulf…
We study the resonance (or Gamow) eigenstates of open chaotic systems in the semiclassical limit, distinguishing between left and right eigenstates of the non-unitary quantum propagator, and also between short-lived and long-lived states. The long-lived left (right) eigenstates are shown to concentrate as $\hbar\to 0$ on the forward (backward) trapped set of the classical dynamics. The limit of a sequence of eigenstates $\{ψ(\hbar)\}_{\hbar\to 0}$ is found to exhibit a remarkably rich structure in phase space that depends on the corresponding limiting decay rate. These results are illustrated …
Physical systems are often neither completely closed nor completely open, but instead they are best described by dynamical systems with partial escape or absorption. In this paper we introduce classical measures that explain the main properties of resonance eigenfunctions of chaotic quantum systems with partial escape. We construct a family of conditionally-invariant measures with varying decay rates by interpolating between the natural measures of the forward and backward dynamics. Numerical simulations in a representative system show that our classical measures correctly describe the main fe…
We show that the autocorrelation of quantum spectra of an open chaotic system is well described by the classical Ruelle-Pollicott resonances of the associated chaotic strange repeller. This correspondence is demonstrated utilizing microwave experiments on 2-D n-disk billiard geometries, by determination of the wave-vector autocorrelation C(κ) from the experimental quantum spectra S_{21}(k). The correspondence is also established via "numerical experiments" that simulate S_{21}(k) and C(κ) using periodic orbit calculations of the quantum and classical resonances. Semiclassical arguments that re…
We numerically show fractal Weyl law behavior in an open Hamiltonian system that is described by a smooth potential and which supports numerous above-barrier resonances. This behavior holds even relatively far away from the classical limit. The complex resonance wave functions are found to be localized on the fractal classical repeller.
In order to study the resonance spectra of chaotic cavities subject to some damping (which can be due to absorption or partial reflection at the boundaries), we use a model of damped quantum maps. In the high-frequency limit, the distribution of (quantum) decay rates is shown to cluster near a ``typical'' value, which is larger than the classical decay rate of the corresponding damped ray dynamics. The speed of this clustering may be quite slow, which could explain why it has not been detected in previous numerical data.
We conjecture that in chaotic quantum systems with escape the intensity statistics for resonance states universally follows an exponential distribution. This requires a scaling by the multifractal mean intensity which depends on the system and the decay rate of the resonance state. We numerically support the conjecture by studying the phase-space Husimi function and the position representation of resonance states of the chaotic standard map, the baker map, and a random matrix model, each with partial escape.
A deformed dielectric microcavity is used as an experimental platform for the analysis of the statistics of chaotic resonances, in the perspective of testing fractal Weyl laws at optical frequencies. In order to surmount the difficulties that arise from reading strongly overlapping spectra, we exploit the mixed nature of the phase space at hand, and only count the high-Q whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) directly. That enables us to draw statistical information on the more lossy chaotic resonances, coupled to the high-Q regular modes via dynamical tunneling. Three different models [classical, Ra…
We discuss and briefly overview recent progress with studying fluctuations in scattering on a resonance state coupled to the background of many chaotic states. Such a problem arises naturally, e.g., when dealing with wave propagation in the presence of a complex environment. Using a statistical model based on random matrix theory, we obtain a number of nonperturbative results for various statistics of scattering characteristics. This includes the joint and marginal distributions of the reflection and transmission intensities and phases, which are derived exactly at arbitrary coupling to the ba…
