The origin of non-reversibility in quantum chaotic systems
Abstract:
It is well known that the appearance of non-reversibility in classical chaotic systems is connected with a local instability of phase trajectories relatively to a small change of initial conditions and parameters of the system. Classical chaotic systems reveal an exponential sensitivity to these changes. This leads to an exponential growth of the initial error with time, and as the result after the statistical averaging over this error, the dynamics of the system becomes non-reversible. In spite of this, the question about the origin of non-reversibility in quantum case remains actual. The point is that the classical notion of instability of phase trajectories loses its sense during quantum consideration. The current work is dedicated to the clarification of the origin of non-reversibility in quantum chaotic systems.
For this purpose we study statistics of quantum Poincare recurrences in Hilbert space for diamagnetic hydrogen atom in strong magnetic field has been investigated. It has been shown that quantities characterizing classical chaos are in a good agreement with the ones that are used to describe quantum chaos. The equality of classical and quantum Poincare recurrences has been shown. It has been proved that one of the signs of the emergence of quantum chaos is the irreversible transition from a pure quantum mechanical state to the mixed one.