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4 - Chaos in quantum mechanics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2009

R. Blümel
Affiliation:
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany
W. P. Reinhardt
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Summary

Einstein (1917) appreciated early on that within the “old” pre-1925/26 quantum mechanics absence of integrability is a serious obstacle for the quantization of classical systems. Therefore, in retrospect not surprisingly, the quantization problem was not adequately solved until the advent of the “new” quantum mechanics by Heisenberg, Born, Jordan and Schrödinger. The new quantum mechanics did not rely at all on the notion of classical paths, and this way, unwittingly, sidestepped the chaos problem. Within the framework of the new theory, any classical system can be quantized, including classically chaotic systems. But while the quantization of integrable systems is straightforward, the quantization of classically chaotic systems, even today, presents a formidable technical challenge. This is especially true for quantization in the semiclassical regime, where the quantum numbers involved are large. In fact, efficient semiclassical quantization rules for chaotic systems were not known until Gutzwiller (1971, 1990) intoduced periodic orbit expansions. Gutzwiller's method is discussed in Section 4.1.3 below. It is important to emphasize here that the existence of chaos in certain classical systems in no way introduces conceptual problems into the framework of modern quantum theory, although, let it be emphasized again, chaos came back with a vengeance from the “old” days of quantum mechanics. Even given all the modern day computer power accessible to the “practitioner” of quantum mechanics, chaos is the ultimate reason for the slow progress in the numerical computation of even moderately excited states in such important, but chaotic problems as the helium atom.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

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  • Chaos in quantum mechanics
  • R. Blümel, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany, W. P. Reinhardt, University of Washington
  • Book: Chaos in Atomic Physics
  • Online publication: 14 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511524509.005
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  • Chaos in quantum mechanics
  • R. Blümel, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany, W. P. Reinhardt, University of Washington
  • Book: Chaos in Atomic Physics
  • Online publication: 14 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511524509.005
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Chaos in quantum mechanics
  • R. Blümel, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany, W. P. Reinhardt, University of Washington
  • Book: Chaos in Atomic Physics
  • Online publication: 14 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511524509.005
Available formats
×