Tunneling Mechanism due to Chaos in a Complex Phase Space

We have revealed that the barrier-tunneling process in non-integrable systems is strongly linked to chaos in complex phase space by investigating a simple scattering map model. The semiclassical wavefunction reproduces complicated features of tunneling perfectly and it enables us to solve all the reasons why those features appear in spite of absence of chaos on the real plane. Multi-generation structure of manifolds, which is the manifestation of complex-domain homoclinic entanglement created by complexified classical dynamics, allows a symbolic coding and it is used as a guiding principle to extract dominant complex trajectories from all the semiclassical candidates.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 6 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Towards Retinoid Therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease(AD) is associated with a variety of pathophysiological features, including amyloid plaques, inflammation, immunological changes, cell death and regeneration processes, altered neurotransmission, and age-related changes. Retinoic acid receptors (RARs) and retinoids are relevant to all of these. Here we review the pathology, pharmacology, and biochemistry of AD in relation to RARs and retinoids, and we suggest that retinoids are candidate drugs for treatment of AD

Semiclassical transmission across transition states

It is shown that the probability of quantum-mechanical transmission across a phase space bottleneck can be compactly approximated using an operator derived from a complex Poincar\'e return map. This result uniformly incorporates tunnelling effects with classically-allowed transmission and generalises a result previously derived for a classically small region of phase space.Comment: To appear in Nonlinearit

Nambu-Hamiltonian flows associated with discrete maps

For a differentiable map $(x_1,x_2,..., x_n)\to (X_1,X_2,..., X_n)$ that has an inverse, we show that there exists a Nambu-Hamiltonian flow in which one of the initial value, say $x_n$, of the map plays the role of time variable while the others remain fixed. We present various examples which exhibit the map-flow correspondence.Comment: 19 page

Evanescent wave approach to diffractive phenomena in convex billiards with corners

What we are going to call in this paper "diffractive phenomena" in billiards is far from being deeply understood. These are sorts of singularities that, for example, some kind of corners introduce in the energy eigenfunctions. In this paper we use the well-known scaling quantization procedure to study them. We show how the scaling method can be applied to convex billiards with corners, taking into account the strong diffraction at them and the techniques needed to solve their Helmholtz equation. As an example we study a classically pseudointegrable billiard, the truncated triangle. Then we focus our attention on the spectral behavior. A numerical study of the statistical properties of high-lying energy levels is carried out. It is found that all computed statistical quantities are roughly described by the so-called semi-Poisson statistics, but it is not clear whether the semi-Poisson statistics is the correct one in the semiclassical limit.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure

Transition from Gaussian-orthogonal to Gaussian-unitary ensemble in a microwave billiard with threefold symmetry

Recently it has been shown that time-reversal invariant systems with discrete symmetries may display in certain irreducible subspaces spectral statistics corresponding to the Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE) rather than to the expected orthogonal one (GOE). A Kramers type degeneracy is predicted in such situations. We present results for a microwave billiard with a threefold rotational symmetry and with the option to display or break a reflection symmetry. This allows us to observe the change from GOE to GUE statistics for one subset of levels. Since it was not possible to separate the three subspectra reliably, the number variances for the superimposed spectra were studied. The experimental results are compared with a theoretical and numerical study considering the effects of level splitting and level loss

Semiclassical Description of Tunneling in Mixed Systems: The Case of the Annular Billiard

We study quantum-mechanical tunneling between symmetry-related pairs of regular phase space regions that are separated by a chaotic layer. We consider the annular billiard, and use scattering theory to relate the splitting of quasi-degenerate states quantized on the two regular regions to specific paths connecting them. The tunneling amplitudes involved are given a semiclassical interpretation by extending the billiard boundaries to complex space and generalizing specular reflection to complex rays. We give analytical expressions for the splittings, and show that the dominant contributions come from {\em chaos-assisted}\/ paths that tunnel into and out of the chaotic layer.Comment: 4 pages, uuencoded postscript file, replaces a corrupted versio

Slow relaxation to equipartition in spring-chain systems

In this study, one-dimensional systems of masses connected by springs, i.e., spring-chain systems, are investigated numerically. The average kinetic energy of chain-end particles of these systems is larger than that of other particles, which is similar to the behavior observed for systems made of masses connected by rigid links. The energetic motion of the end particles is, however, transient, and the system relaxes to thermal equilibrium after a while, where the average kinetic energy of each particle is the same, that is, equipartition of energy is achieved. This is in contrast to the case of systems made of masses connected by rigid links, where the energetic motion of the end particles is observed in equilibrium. The timescale of relaxation estimated by simulation increases rapidly with increasing spring constant. The timescale is also estimated using the Boltzmann-Jeans theory and is found to be in quite good agreement with that obtained by the simulation

Spectral properties of quantized barrier billiards

The properties of energy levels in a family of classically pseudointegrable systems, the barrier billiards, are investigated. An extensive numerical study of nearest-neighbor spacing distributions, next-to-nearest spacing distributions, number variances, spectral form factors, and the level dynamics is carried out. For a special member of the billiard family, the form factor is calculated analytically for small arguments in the diagonal approximation. All results together are consistent with the so-called semi-Poisson statistics.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

A realistic example of chaotic tunneling: The hydrogen atom in parallel static electric and magnetic fields

Statistics of tunneling rates in the presence of chaotic classical dynamics is discussed on a realistic example: a hydrogen atom placed in parallel uniform static electric and magnetic fields, where tunneling is followed by ionization along the fields direction. Depending on the magnetic quantum number, one may observe either a standard Porter-Thomas distribution of tunneling rates or, for strong scarring by a periodic orbit parallel to the external fields, strong deviations from it. For the latter case, a simple model based on random matrix theory gives the correct distribution.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev.