Quantum ergodicity and delocalization of Schrödinger eigenfunctions (Q2163065)

Although one tends to think that the basic physical and mathematical principles of quantum mechanics are clear for already 100 years, there are several problems in this field, both physical and mathematical in their nature, yet waiting for further clarifications. Probably the most important challenging question is how to generalize non-relativistic and finite degree-of-freedom quantum mechanics to a relativistic and infinite degree-of-freedom quantum field theory. Another open question is whether or not quantum mechanics in its present form, i.e. without adding further basic principle(s) to its core, is applicable in organic chemistry and molecular biology. This latter question is perhaps strongly related with the understanding of the interplay (both physical and mathematical) between properties of a classical and its underlying quantum system. One of these relations is the precise form of the connection between the spectrum of the Schrödinger operator of a quantum system and that of a large random matrix ensemble when the corresponding classical physical system is sufficiently ergodic or chaotic (similar connection was discovered by Wigner in case of quantum systems with large degree-of-freedom, namely nuclei, in the 1950's). Another one is likewise the connection between the famous ``melting of the wave function'' problem and the ergodic and chaotic properties of the corresponding classical dynamical system. The aim of this book is to provide an introduction from a mathematical direction into these problems, more precisely the subtle correspondences between the so-called random matrix conjecture, various eigenfunction delocalization theorems, the quantum unique ergodicity conjecture on the quantum side and the ergodic and chaotic phenomena in dynamical system theory on the classical side. The book consists of 7 chapters and is structured as follows. It is opened with an excellent introduction containing a detailed historical survey on both the mathematical roots (involving the unexpected numerical discovery of spectrum resemblance between collections of random matrices and chaotic quantum systems in the 1980's) and the old physical roots traceable back to Einstein in 1917 (regarding how to quantize general physical systems), it also contains an outline of current research lines (Chapter 1); then roughly the first half of the book is devoted to the case of the continuum more precisely systems modeled on compact Riemannian manifolds and deals with various high frequency delocalization theorems, the quantum ergodicity theorem, the quantum unique ergodicity conjecture and associated but independent important concepts like the entropy of a Riemannian manifold (Chapters 2 and 3); the case of the round sphere from the viewpoint of quantum ergodicity is treated separately (Chapter 5) because this geometry, as always, permits explicit but non-trivial computations; the second half of the book surveys the discrete case more precisely describes the concepts, theorems, etc. appropriately modified for regular and non-regular graphs (Chapters 4 and 6) with the aim of offering toy models for the previous material; the book closes with a detailed account of the recent Backhausz--Szegedy theorem on the Gaussianity of eigenfunctions over random regular graphs (Chapter 7). About the style of the book: the book is written in a language, notation and clarity appropriate for (young) mathematicians to enter the field i.e. to precisely understand the key problems, concepts and results. E.g. every chapter starts with a brief and clear introduction-summary, detailed proofs are exhibited for most of the theorems however sometimes, certainly in order to keep balance and save space, they are skipped and replaced with outlining the main technical steps only. It is emphasized again here that although probably the author's direct target was the mathematical community, the book's content is definitely very interesting for (mathematical) physicists too and its style continues to be digestive to them: thus the book is warmly recommended to both of them i.e., the mathematicians and the physicists. Finally an auxiliary remark from the reviewer: the principal problem summarized in this book is to understand the interaction between certain properties of a classical dynamical and its underlying quantum system. A definite example is the characterization of the quantum delocalization of eigenfunctions of the quantum systems's Schrödinger equation in terms of the ergodic and chaotic behaviour of the corresponding classical dynamical system. The applied mathematical tools in this book mainly contain measure theoretic and combinatorial methods. However it is known that beyond Heisenberg's and Schrödinger's formulations, quantum mechanics admits a mathematically equivalent and precise third formulation too, based on Feynman's path integration. In particular there exists a rigorous derivation of the Schrödinger equation via path integrals in which eigenfunctions are explicitly built up from the trajectories of classical point particles travelling along all continuous paths. At first sight this framework also seems suitable to deal with questions similar to those of the book.