Quantum versus chaos. Questions emerging from mesoscopic cosmos (Q1294618)

Quantum presenting a principal randomness and chaos a pseudorandomness, are key concepts in contemporary science. Alas it seems they are incompatible by nature. The volume presents an investigation into quantum transport in mesoscopic or nanoscale systems which are classically chaotic. It shows the success and failure of quantal, semiclassical, and random matrix theory in dealing with these problems. But it is important to note that the book concerns only conservative Hamiltonian systems. Chapter 1 introduces an onset of chaos as the collapse of KAM tori. Then it is argued that quantum dynamics of such systems suppresses a classical chaos. The next Ch. 2 describes the semiclassical quantization of chaos and brings the Gutzwiller's trace formula for a correspondence between the semiclassical quantum ``irregular'' spectra and chaotic orbits in nonintegrable systems. But due to the linearity of the Schrödinger equation, the quantum system exhibits no deterministic chaos by definition. So in Ch. 3 it is shown that in principle one can only envisage a quantum analogue of classical chaos. One then speaks about this analogy as about a quantum chaos. In this sense some examples of pseudo-chaos in quantum systems are introduced which have no classical counterpart. Concave and convex billiards, together with a kicked rotator are genuine prototypes of conservative chaotic systems. The quantum mechanical study of these billiards is one of the important themes of quantum chaos. Problems of quantum transport in open magnetic billiards is the theme of Ch. 4. Semiclassical theory of classically chaotic scattering on hyperbolic billiards is treated in Ch. 5. How the quantum chaos can be induced by nonadiabaticity is investigated in Ch. 6. The core of the book is condensed in Ch. 7, named ``Level dynamics and statistical mechanics''. Statistical aspects of classically-chaotic quantum systems have been so far described mainly by random matrix theory and its constrained variants. The author attempts to explain why an apparent irregularity of quantum spectra can be described more profoundly by statistical mechanics of the completely-integrable Calogero-Moser and Calogero-Sutherland systems derived from quantum mechanical eigenvalue problems by regarding a nonintegrability parameter as a pseudo-time. Ch. 8 is a little bit speculative and attempts to implement ``own ideas of the author going in a radically new direction'' (p. 162). It is devoted to an investigation of the role of time discretization in both classical and quantum mechanics. To obtain chaos in quantum mechanics it is crucial, according to the author, to pursue a non-unitary time evolution. The last Chapter ``Conclusions and Prospects'' just summarizes the content of the book. But in the Epilogue the author goes on to be rather skeptic when saying: ``To conclude, the pursuit of quantum chaos to reconcile quantum with chaos deserves an extremely great effort.'' (p. 207) After reading the book one can say the problem packed in the title ''Quantum vs. Chaos'' remains very open. A general belief in the incompatibility between quantum and chaos prevails. But the book brings a lot of new theoretical and experimental informations emerging from the mesoscopic level of treatment. That is a very positive message. On the other side there are many imprecise or even misleading statements concerning, e.g., a definition of classical chaos, especially those concerning a relationship between Lyapunov exponents and Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy. Fortunately this has no direct consequences upon local results of the book. The book is critical to the random matrix theory, what can be very positive in this context for a fresh wind in the field of quantum vs. chaos problem for the near future.