Semi-classical formula beyond the Ehrenfest time in quantum chaos. I: Trace formula (Q2477568)

The semi-classical trace formula, relating the energy levels of a quantum system to its classical closed orbits, is a significant tool of semi-classical analysis and in particular in quantum chaos. Though it is generally believed in the physics literature that such a formula should be valid up to the Heisenberg time \(t_H\sim \frac{1}{\hbar}\) or at least up to some power of \(\hbar\), so far it was only established up to the much shorter Ehrenfest time \(t_E\sim\log(\frac{1}{\hbar})\). Establishing a semi-classical formula beyond the Ehrenfest time is one of the outstanding problems in quantum chaos. In this paper the author studies a simple model for quantum chaotic dynamics, namely the quantization of a nonlinear hyperbolic map \(M\) on the torus. The quantum propagator \(\widehat M\) is a unitary operator acting on a finite dimensional Hilbert space (of dimension \(N=1/2\pi\hbar\)). The main result of the paper is a semi-classical trace formula valid beyond the Ehrenfest time. In order to derive this formula the author approximates the propagator by a semi-classical non-stationary normal form. The semi-classical formula expresses \(\text{Tr}(\widehat{M}^t)\) in terms of semi-classical invariants associated to periodic orbits, with an error term vanishing with \(\hbar\) for long times \(t\sim Ct_E\) for arbitrary \(C\). Namely, for any constants \(C,K\) there is a constant \(D_{K,C}\) such that \[ \|\text{Tr}(\widehat{M}^t)-{\mathcal T}_{t,J}\|\leq D_{K,C}\hbar^K \] for any \(J>2(K+C)\) and \(t\leq Ct_{E}\), where the semi-classical term is given by \[ {\mathcal T}_{t,J}=\sum_{x=M^tx}| \det(D_xM^t-1)| ^{-1/2}\exp(i{\mathcal A}_{x,t}/\hbar)(1+\hbar E_{1,x,t}+\cdots+\hbar^JE_{J,x,t}), \] with \({\mathcal A}_{x,t}\) the action of the periodic orbit, and \(E_{j,x,t}\) depends on semi-classical normal forms coefficients of the periodic orbit.