Semiclassical dynamics of circular-orbit Rydberg wave packets

Abstract

A semiclassical propagator is applied to describe the dynamics of circular-orbit wave packets which are initially well localized in three dimensions. A sum over classical Kepler trajectories for the wave-packet autocorrelation function is obtained which is extremely accurate well past the classical regime of the evolution regime of the wave packet. The nonclassical nature of the wave-packet evolution at long times is associated with the interference between amplitudes from classical paths at different energies. The time scale of the wave-packet revivals is related to the shearing rate of the corresponding classical ensemble.