Quantum Chaos, Irreversibility, dissipation and dephasing

Doron Cohen

Published 2002-01-20Version 1

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 $\Delta\propto\hbar^d$, where $d$ is the dimensionality; The other is $\Delta_b\propto\hbar$, 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 linear response theory can be trusted. Demonstrations of this general idea, that had been published in 1999, have appeared in studies of wavepacket dynamics, survival probability, dissipation, quantum irreversibility, fidelity and dephasing.