Kicked Rotor Research Articles

Dynamical localization in nonideal kicked rotors driven by two competing pulsatile modulations

Dynamical localization in nonideal kicked rotors driven by two competing pulsatile modulations

Faster entanglement driven by quantum resonance in many-body kicked rotors

Faster entanglement driven by quantum resonance in many-body kicked rotors

Quadratic Growth of Out-of-Time-Ordered Correlators in Quantum Kicked Rotor Model.

We investigate both theoretically and numerically the dynamics of out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) in quantum resonance conditions for a kicked rotor model. We employ various operators to construct OTOCs in order to thoroughly quantify their commutation relation at different times, therefore unveiling the process of quantum scrambling. With the help of quantum resonance condition, we have deduced the exact expressions of quantum states during both forward evolution and time reversal, which enables us to establish the laws governing OTOCs' time dependence. We find interestingly that the OTOCs of different types increase in a quadratic function of time, breaking the freezing of quantum scrambling induced by the dynamical localization under non-resonance condition. The underlying mechanism is discovered, and the possible applications in quantum entanglement are discussed.

Chaos and localized phases in a two-body linear kicked rotor system.

Despite the periodic kicks, a linear kicked rotor (LKR) is an integrable and exactly solvable model in which the kinetic energy term is linear in momentum. It was recently shown that spatially interacting LKRs are also integrable, and results in dynamical localization in the corresponding quantum regime. Similar localized phases exist in other nonintegrable models such as the coupled relativistic kicked rotors. This work, using a two-body LKR, demonstrates two main results; first, it is shown that chaos can be induced in the integrable linear kicked rotor through interactions between the momenta of rotors. An analytical estimate of its Lyapunov exponent is obtained. Second, the quantum dynamics of this chaotic model, upon variation of kicking and interaction strengths, is shown to exhibit a variety of phases: classically induced localization, dynamical localization, subdiffusive, and diffusive phases. We point out the signatures of these phases from the perspective of entanglement production in this system. By defining an effective Hilbert space dimension, the entanglement growth rate can be understood using appropriate random matrix averages.

Spatiotemporally ordered patterns in a chain of coupled dissipative kicked rotors

Spatiotemporally ordered patterns in a chain of coupled dissipative kicked rotors

Many topological regions on the Bloch sphere of the spin-1/2 double-kicked top

Floquet topological systems have been shown to exhibit features not commonly found in conventional topological systems such as topological phases characterized by arbitrarily large winding numbers. This is clearly highlighted in the quantum double kicked rotor coupled to spin-1/2 degrees of freedom [Phys. Rev. A 97, 063603 (2018)] where large winding numbers are achieved by tuning the kick strengths. Here, we extend the results to the spin-1/2 quantum double kicked top and find not only does the system exhibit topological regions with large winding numbers, but a large number of them are needed to fully characterize the topology of the Bloch sphere of the top for general kick strengths. Due to the geometry of the Bloch sphere it is partitioned into regions with different topology and the boundaries separating them are home to 0 and $\ensuremath{\pi}$ quasienergy bound states. We characterize the regions by comparing local versions of the mean field, quantum, and mean chiral displacement winding numbers. We also use a probe state to locate the boundaries by observing localization as the state evolves when it has a large initial overlap with bound states. Finally, we briefly discuss the connections between the spin-1/2 quantum double kicked top and multistep quantum walks, putting the system in the context of some current experiments in the exploration of topological phases.

Coexistence of directed momentum current and ballistic energy diffusion in coupled non-Hermitian kicked rotors

We numerically investigate the quantum transport in coupled kicked rotors with $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric potential. We find that spontaneous $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry breaking of wave functions emerges when the amplitude of the imaginary part of the complex potential is beyond a threshold value, which can be modulated by the coupling strength effectively. In the regime of $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry breaking, the particles driven by the periodical kicks move unidirectionally in momentum space, indicating the emergence of a directed current. Meanwhile, with increasing the coupling strength, we find a transition from the ballistic energy diffusion to a kind of modified ballistic energy diffusion where the width of the wave packet also increases with time in a power law. Our findings suggest that the decoherence effect induced by the interplay between the interparticle coupling and the non-Hermitian driving potential is responsible for these particular transport behaviors.

Detecting topological phase transitions in a double kicked quantum rotor

We present a concrete theoretical proposal for detecting topological phase transitions in double kicked atom-optics kicked rotors with internal spin-1/2 degree of freedom. The implementation utilizes a kicked Bose-Einstein condensate evolving in one-dimensional momentum space. To reduce influence of atom loss and phase decoherence we aim to keep experimental durations short while maintaining a resonant experimental protocol. Experimental limitations induced by phase noise, quasimomentum distributions, symmetries, and the AC-Stark shift are considered. Our results thus suggest a feasible and optimized procedure for observing topological phase transitions in quantum kicked rotors.

Low-energy prethermal phase and crossover to thermalization in nonlinear kicked rotors

In the presence of interactions, periodically-driven quantum systems generically thermalize to an infinite-temperature state. Recently, however, it was shown that in random kicked rotors with local interactions, this long-time equilibrium could be strongly delayed by operating in a regime of weakly fluctuating random phases, leading to the emergence of a metastable thermal ensemble. Here we show that when the random kinetic energy is smaller than the interaction energy, this system in fact exhibits a much richer dynamical phase diagram, which includes a low-energy pre-thermal phase characterized by a light-cone spreading of correlations in momentum space. We develop a hydrodynamic theory of this phase and find a very good agreement with exact numerical simulations. We finally explore the full dynamical phase diagram of the system and find that the transition toward full thermalization is characterized by relatively sharp crossovers.

Interplay between quantum diffusion and localization in the atom-optics kicked rotor.

Atom-optics kicked rotor represents an experimentally reliable version of the paradigmatic quantum kicked rotor system. In this system, a periodic sequence of kicks are imparted to the cold atomic cloud. After a short initial diffusive phase the cloud settles down to a stationary state due to the onset of dynamical localization. In this paper, to explore the interplay between localized and diffusive phases, we experimentally implement a modification to this system in which the sign of the kick sequence is flipped after every M kicks. This is achieved in our experiment by allowing free evolution for half the Talbot time after every M kicks. Depending on the value of M, this modified system displays a combination of enhanced diffusion followed by asymptotic localization. This is explained as resulting from two competing processes-localization induced by standard kicked rotor type kicks, and diffusion induced by the half Talbot time evolution. The experimental and numerical simulations agree with one another. The evolving states display localized but nonexponential wave function profiles. This provides another route to quantum control in the kicked rotor class of systems.

Quantum transport in a combined kicked rotor and quantum walk system

We present a theoretical and numerical study of the competition between two opposite interference effects, namely interference-induced ballistic transport on one hand, and strong (Anderson) localization on the other. While the former effect allows for resistance free transport, the latter brings the transport to a complete halt. As a model system, we consider the quantum kicked rotor, where strong localization is observed in the discrete momentum coordinate. In this model, we introduce the ballistic transport in the form of a Hadamard quantum walk in that momentum coordinate. The two transport mechanisms are combined by alternating the corresponding Floquet operators. Extending the corresponding calculation for the kicked rotor, we estimate the classical diffusion coefficient for the combined dynamics. Another argument, based on the introduction of an effective Heisenberg time should then allow to estimate the localization time and the localization length. While this is known to work reasonably well in the kicked rotor case, we find that it fails in our case. While the combined dynamics still shows localization, it takes place at much larger times and shows much larger localization lengths than predicted. Finally, we combine the kicked rotor with other types of quantum walks, namely diffusive and localizing quantum walks. In the diffusive case, the localizing dynamics of the kicked rotor is completely canceled and we get pure diffusion. In the case of the localizing quantum walk, the combined system remains localized, but with a larger localization length.

Kicked rotor with attosecond pulse train

The kicked rotor (KR) is one of the basic models in connection with chaos and quantum chaos. A possible application of an attosecond pulse train as a kicking field in the KR is theoretically examined for the first time. This version of the KR is denoted as an atto-KR. It seems to be the most realistic version of the KR because it takes into account the real form of the kicking field as it appears in the experiments. The atto-KR is investigated from the classical and the quantum aspects. In the classical case, a new map instead of the Chirikov standard map is proposed. It may be useful in appropriate experiments with the classical chaos. In the quantum case, the atto-KR gives satisfactory results. Phenomena such as dynamical localization and quantum resonances appear in the undisturbed form. It may be also used for examining the influence of the quantum effects on classical chaos and diffusion.

Quantum walks with quantum chaotic coins: Loschmidt echo, classical limit, and thermalization.

Coined discrete-time quantum walks are studied using simple deterministic dynamical systems as coins whose classical limit can range from being integrable to chaotic. It is shown that a Loschmidt echo-like fidelity plays a central role, and when the coin is chaotic this is approximately the characteristic function of a classical random walker. Thus the classical binomial distribution arises as a limit of the quantum walk and the walker exhibits diffusive growth before eventually becoming ballistic. The coin-walker entanglement growth is shown to be logarithmic in time as in the case of many-body localization and coupled kicked rotors, and saturates to a value that depends on the relative coin and walker space dimensions. In a coin-dominated scenario, the chaos can thermalize the quantum walk to typical random states such that the entanglement saturates at the Haar averaged Page value, unlike in a walker-dominated case when atypical states seem to be produced.

Linear and logarithmic entanglement production in an interacting chaotic system.

We investigate entanglement growth for a pair of coupled kicked rotors. For weak coupling, the growth of the entanglement entropy is found to be initially linear followed by a logarithmic growth. We calculate analytically the time after which the entanglement entropy changes its profile, and a good agreement with the numerical result is found. We further show that the different regimes of entanglement growth are associated with different rates of energy growth displayed by a rotor. At a large time, energy grows diffusively, which is preceded by an intermediate dynamical localization. The time span of intermediate dynamical localization decreases with increasing coupling strength. We argue that the observed diffusive energy growth is the result of one rotor acting as an environment to the other, which destroys the coherence. We show that the decay of the coherence is initially exponential followed by a power law.

Bogoliubov excitations in the quasiperiodic kicked rotor: Stability of a kicked condensate and the quasi–insulator-to-metal transition

We study the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate in the quasiperiodic kicked rotor described by a Gross-Pitaevskii equation with periodic boundary conditions. As the interactions are increased, Bogoliubov excitations appear and deplete the condensate; we characterize this instability by considering the population of the first Bogoliubov mode, and show that it does not prevent, for small enough interaction strengths, the observation of the transition. However, the predicted subdiffusive behavior is not observed in the stable region. For higher interaction strengths, the condensate may be strongly depleted before this dynamical regimes set in.

Dynamics of the mean-field-interacting quantum kicked rotor

We study the dynamics of the many-body atomic kicked rotor with interactions at the mean-field level, governed by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We show that dynamical localization is destroyed by the interaction, and replaced by a subdiffusive behavior. In contrast to results previously obtained from a simplified version of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, the subdiffusive exponent does not appear to be universal. By studying the phase of the mean-field wave function, we propose a new approximation that describes correctly the dynamics at experimentally relevant times close to the start of subdiffusion, while preserving the reduced computational cost of the former approximation.

Entanglement production by interaction quenches of quantum chaotic subsystems.

The entanglement production in bipartite quantum systems is studied for initially unentangled product eigenstates of the subsystems, which are assumed to be quantum chaotic. Based on a perturbative computation of the Schmidt eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix, explicit expressions for the time-dependence of entanglement entropies, including the von Neumann entropy, are given. An appropriate rescaling of time and the entropies by their saturation values leads a universal curve, independent of the interaction. The extension to the nonperturbative regime is performed using a recursively embedded perturbation theory to produce the full transition and the saturation values. The analytical results are found to be in good agreement with numerical results for random matrix computations and a dynamical system given by a pair of coupled kicked rotors.

Scrambling in strongly chaotic weakly coupled bipartite systems: Universality beyond the Ehrenfest timescale

Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOC), vigorously being explored as a measure of quantum chaos and information scrambling, is studied here in the natural and simplest multi-particle context of bipartite systems. We show that two strongly chaotic and weakly interacting subsystems display two distinct phases in the growth of OTOC.The first is dominated by intra-subsystem scrambling, when an exponential growth with a positive Lyapunov exponent is observed till the Ehrenfest time. This phase is essentially independent of the interaction, while the second phase is an interaction dominated exponential approach to saturation that is universal and described by a random matrix model. This simple random matrix model of weakly interacting strongly chaotic bipartite systems, previously employed for studying entanglement and spectral transitions, is approximately analytically solvable for its OTOC. The example of two coupled kicked rotors is used to demonstrate the two phases, and the extent to which the random matrix model is applicable. That the two phases correspond to delocalization in the subsystems followed by inter-subsystem mixing is seen via the participation ratio in phase-space. We also point out that the second, universal, phase alone exists when the observables are in a sense already scrambled. Thus, while the post-Ehrenfest time OTOC growth is in general not well-understood, the case of strongly chaotic and weakly coupled systems presents an, perhaps important, exception.

Slow heating in a quantum coupled kicked rotors system

We consider a finite-size periodically driven quantum system of coupled kicked rotors which exhibits two distinct regimes in parameter space: a dynamically-localized one with kinetic-energy saturation in time and a chaotic one with unbounded energy absorption (dynamical delocalization). We provide numerical evidence that the kinetic energy grows subdiffusively in time in a parameter region close to the boundary of the chaotic dynamically-delocalized regime. We map the different regimes of the model via a spectral analysis of the Floquet operator and investigate the properties of the Floquet states in the subdiffusive regime. We observe an anomalous scaling of the average inverse participation ratio (IPR) analogous to the one observed at the critical point of the Anderson transition in a disordered system. We interpret the behavior of the IPR and the behavior of the asymptotic-time energy as a mark of the breaking of the eigenstate thermalization in the subdiffusive regime. Then we study the distribution of the kinetic-energy-operator off-diagonal matrix elements. We find that in presence of energy subdiffusion they are not Gaussian and we propose an anomalous random matrix model to describe them.

Resonant Quantum Kicked Rotor as A Continuous-Time Quantum Walk

We analytically investigate the analogy between a standard continuous-time quantum walk in one dimension and the evolution of the quantum kicked rotor at quantum resonance conditions. We verify that the obtained probability distributions are equal for a suitable choice of the kick strength of the rotor. We further discuss how to engineer the evolution of the walk for dynamically preparing experimentally relevant states. These states are important for future applications of the atom-optics kicked rotor for the realization of ratchets and quantum search.