Manifestation of Arnol’d Diffusion in Quantum Systems

Abstract

We study an analog of the classical Arnol'd diffusion in a quantum system of two coupled nonlinear oscillators one of which is governed by an external periodic force with two frequencies. In a classical model this very weak diffusion happens in a narrow stochastic layer along the coupling resonance and leads to an increase of the total energy of the system. We show that quantum dynamics of wave packets mimics, up to some extent, global properties of the classical Arnol'd diffusion. This specific diffusion represents a new type of quantum dynamics and may be observed, for example, in 2D semiconductor structures (quantum billiards) perturbed by time-periodic external fields.