Classical versus Quantum Time Evolution of Densities at Limited Phase-Space Resolution

We study the interrelations between the classical (Frobenius-Perron) and the quantum (Husimi) propagator for phase-space (quasi-)probability densities in a Hamiltonian system displaying a mix of regular and chaotic behavior. We focus on common resonances of these operators which we determine by blurring phase-space resolution. We demonstrate that classical and quantum time evolution look alike if observed with a resolution much coarser than a Planck cell and explain how this similarity arises for the propagators as well as their spectra. The indistinguishability of blurred quantum and classical evolution implies that classical resonances can conveniently be determined from quantum mechanics and in turn become effective for decay rates of quantum correlations.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Coarse Grained Liouville Dynamics of piecewise linear discontinuous maps

We compute the spectrum of the classical and quantum mechanical coarse-grained propagators for a piecewise linear discontinuous map. We analyze the quantum - classical correspondence and the evolution of the spectrum with increasing resolution. Our results are compared to the ones obtained for a mixed system.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Resonances of the Frobenius-Perron Operator for a Hamiltonian Map with a Mixed Phase Space

Resonances of the (Frobenius-Perron) evolution operator P for phase-space densities have recently attracted considerable attention, in the context of interrelations between classical and quantum dynamics. We determine these resonances as well as eigenvalues of P for Hamiltonian systems with a mixed phase space, by truncating P to finite size in a Hilbert space of phase-space functions and then diagonalizing. The corresponding eigenfunctions are localized on unstable manifolds of hyperbolic periodic orbits for resonances and on islands of regular motion for eigenvalues. Using information drawn from the eigenfunctions we reproduce the resonances found by diagonalization through a variant of the cycle expansion of periodic-orbit theory and as rates of correlation decay.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figure

Dissipation time and decay of correlations

We consider the effect of noise on the dynamics generated by volume-preserving maps on a d-dimensional torus. The quantity we use to measure the irreversibility of the dynamics is the dissipation time. We focus on the asymptotic behaviour of this time in the limit of small noise. We derive universal lower and upper bounds for the dissipation time in terms of various properties of the map and its associated propagators: spectral properties, local expansivity, and global mixing properties. We show that the dissipation is slow for a general class of non-weakly-mixing maps; on the opposite, it is fast for a large class of exponentially mixing systems which include uniformly expanding maps and Anosov diffeomorphisms.Comment: 26 Pages, LaTex. Submitted to Nonlinearit

Propagating wave correlations in complex systems

We describe a novel approach for computing wave correlation functions inside finite spatial domains driven by complex and statistical sources. By exploiting semiclassical approximations, we provide explicit algorithms to calculate the local mean of these correlation functions in terms of the underlying classical dynamics. By defining appropriate ensemble averages, we show that fluctuations about the mean can be characterised in terms of classical correlations. We give in particular an explicit expression relating fluctuations of diagonal contributions to those of the full wave correlation function. The methods have a wide range of applications both in quantum mechanics and for classical wave problems such as in vibro-acoustics and electromagnetism. We apply the methods here to simple quantum systems, so-called quantum maps, which model the behaviour of generic problems on Poincaré sections. Although low-dimensional, these models exhibit a chaotic classical limit and share common characteristics with wave propagation in complex structures

Spectral properties of noisy classical and quantum propagators

We study classical and quantum maps on the torus phase space, in the presence of noise. We focus on the spectral properties of the noisy evolution operator, and prove that for any amount of noise, the quantum spectrum converges to the classical one in the semiclassical limit. The small-noise behaviour of the classical spectrum highly depends on the dynamics generated by the map. For a chaotic dynamics, the outer spectrum consists in isolated eigenvalues (``resonances'') inside the unit circle, leading to an exponential damping of correlations. On the opposite, in the case of a regular map, part of the spectrum accumulates along a one-dimensional ``string'' connecting the origin with unity, yielding a diffusive behaviour. We finally study the non-commutativity between the semiclassical and small-noise limits, and illustrate this phenomenon by computing (analytically and numerically) the classical and quantum spectra for some maps.Comment: 35 pages, 6 .eps figures, to be published in Nonlinearity. I added some references and comment

District heating and the Integration of renewable energy sources: A chance for rural areas

In various countries small-scale district heating networks in rural areas have been build or taken into advanced stage of planning. In some cases heat is generated from renewable energy sources or in combined heat and power plants. Conducted interviews have returned that the biomass heating technology is mature and reliable and the operation of small district heating networks is generally well tested