The Loschmidt echo in classically chaotic systems: Quantum chaos, irreversibility and decoherence

In this paper we develop the topics of Quantum Recurrences and of Quantum Fidelity which have attracted great interest in recent years. The return probability is given by the square modulus of the overlap between a given initial wavepacket and the corresponding evolved one; quantum recurrences in time can be observed if this overlap is unity. We provide some conditions under which this is semiclassically achieved taking as initial wavepacket a coherent state located on a clos...

We study the decoherence of a one-particle system, whose classical correpondent is chaotic, when it evolves coupled to a weak quenched environment. This is done by analytical evaluation of the Loschmidt Echo, (i.e. the revival of a localized density excitation upon reversal of its time evolution), in presence of the perturbation. We predict an exponential decay for the Loschmidt Echo with a (decoherence) rate which is asymptotically given by the mean Lyapunov exponent of the ...

The notion of Loschmidt echo (also called "quantum fidelity") has been introduced in order to study the (in)-stability of the quantum dynamics under perturbations of the Hamiltonian. It has been extensively studied in the past few years in the physics literature, in connection with the problems of "quantum chaos", quantum computation and decoherence. In this paper, we study this quantity semiclassically (as $\hbar \to 0$), taking as reference quantum states the usual coherent...

The Loschmidt Echo M(t) (defined as the squared overlap of wave packets evolving with two slightly different Hamiltonians) is a measure of quantum reversibility. We investigate its behavior for classically quasi-integrable systems. A dominant regime emerges where M(t) ~ t^{-alpha} with alpha=3d/2 depending solely on the dimension d of the system. This power law decay is faster than the result ~ t^{-d} for the decay of classical phase space densities.

Loschmidt echo (LE) is a measure of reversibility and sensitivity to perturbations of quantum evolutions. For weak perturbations its decay rate is given by the width of the local density of states (LDOS). When the perturbation is strong enough, it has been shown in chaotic systems that its decay is dictated by the classical Lyapunov exponent. However, several recent studies have shown an unexpected non-uniform decay rate as a function of the perturbation strength instead of t...

Chaotic dynamics of a nonlinear oscillator is considered in the semiclassical approximation. The Loschmidt echo is calculated for a time scale which is of the power law in semiclassical parameter. It is shown that an exponential decay of the Loschmidt echo is due to a Lyapunov exponent and it has a pure classical nature.

The Loschmidt echo and the purity are two quantities that can provide invaluable information about the evolution of a quantum system. While the Loschmidt echo characterizes instability and sensitivity to perturbations, purity measures the loss of coherence produced by an environment coupled to the system. For classically chaotic systems both quantities display a number of -- supposedly universal -- regimes that can lead on to think of them as equivalent quantities. We study t...

We demonstrate analytically and verify numerically that the out-of-time order correlator is given by the thermal average of Loschmidt echo signals. This provides a direct link between the out-of-time-order correlator -- a recently suggested measure of information scrambling in quantum chaotic systems -- and the Loschmidt echo, a well-appreciated familiar diagnostic that captures the dynamical aspect of chaotic behavior in the time domain, and is accessible to experimental stu...

We present a numerically feasible semiclassical (SC) method to evaluate quantum fidelity decay (Loschmidt echo, FD) in a classically chaotic system. It was thought that such evaluation would be intractable, but instead we show that a uniform SC expression not only is tractable but it gives remarkably accurate numerical results for the standard map in both the Fermi-golden-rule and Lyapunov regimes. Because it allows Monte Carlo evaluation, the uniform expression is accurate a...

The Loschmidt echo measures the sensitivity to perturbations of quantum evolutions. We study its short time decay in classically chaotic systems. Using perturbation theory and throwing out all correlation imposed by the initial state and the perturbation, we show that the characteristic time of this regime is well described by the inverse of the width of the local density of states. This result is illustrated and discussed in a numerical study in a 2-dimensional chaotic billi...