Sodium Atoms Kicked by Standing Waves Provide a New Probe of Quantum Chaos
JUN 01, 1995
Several features of quantum chaos have been demonstrated in a system of sodium atoms interacting with a modulated standing wave of light. The system can be tuned continuously from a regime that can be described classically to one where a quantum description is necessary.
DOI: 10.1063/1.2808053
The question of how to quantize a system whose classical dynamics is chaotic has long been a puzzle. The hallmark of classical chaos is sensitive dependence on initial conditions: A small perturbation of the system changes its evolution in a way that grows exponentially with time. But in quantum mechanics a small perturbation of the initial state will in general be mapped into a small perturbation of the final state. In reeveral cent years the study of quantum systems whose underlying classical dynamics is chaotic has been an active area of research.
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© 1995 American Institute of Physics
