Fluctuations and Persistence in Quantum Diffusion on Regular Lattices

Cheng Ma, Omar Malik, G. Korniss

Published 2024-02-08Version 1

We investigate quantum persistence by analyzing amplitude and phase fluctuations of the wave function governed by the time-dependent free-particle Schr\"odinger equation. The quantum system is initialized with local random uncorrelated Gaussian amplitude and phase fluctuations. In analogy with classical diffusion, the persistence probability is defined as the probability that the local (amplitude or phase) fluctuations have not changed sign up to time $t$. Our results show that the persistence probability in quantum diffusion exhibits exponential-like tails. More specifically, in $d=1$ the persistence probability decays in a stretched exponential fashion, while in $d=2$ and $d=3$ as an exponential. We also provide some insights by analyzing the two-point spatial and temporal correlation functions in the limit of small fluctuations. In particular, in the long-time limit, the temporal correlation functions for both local amplitude and phase fluctuations become time-homogeneous, i.e., the zero-crossing events correspond to those of a stationary Gaussian process, with sufficiently fast-decaying power-law tail of its autocorrelation function, implying an exponential-like tail of the persistence probabilities.