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1 - Introduction

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

By now the “chaos revolution” has reached nearly every branch of the natural sciences. In fact, chaos is everywhere. To name but a few examples, we talk about chaotic weather patterns, chaotic chemical reactions and the chaotic evolution of insect populations. Atomic and molecular physics are no exceptions. At first glance this is surprising since atoms and molecules are well described by the linear laws of quantum mechanics, while an essential ingredient of chaos is nonlinearity in the dynamic equations. Thus, chaos and atomic physics seem to have little to do with each other. But recently, atomic and molecular physicists have pushed the limits of their experiments to such high quantum numbers that it starts to make sense, in the spirit of Bohr's correspondence principle, to compare the results of atomic physics experiments with the predictions of classical mechanics, which, for the most part, show complexity and chaos. The most striking observation in recent years has been that quantum systems seem to “know” whether their classical counterparts display regular or chaotic motion. This fact can be understood intuitively on the basis of Feynman's version of quantum mechanics. In 1948 Feynman showed that quantum mechanics can be formulated on the basis of classical mechanics with the help of path integrals. Therefore it is expected that the quantum mechanics of an atom or molecule is profoundly influenced, but of course not completely determined, by the qualitative behaviour of its underlying classical mechanics.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

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  • Introduction
  • 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/CBO9780511524509.002
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  • Introduction
  • 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/CBO9780511524509.002
Available formats
×

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.

  • Introduction
  • 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/CBO9780511524509.002
Available formats
×