Quantum-classical correspondence of strongly chaotic many-body spin models

Abstract

We study the quantum-classical correspondence for systems with interacting spin-particles that are strongly chaotic in the classical limit. This is done in the presence of constants of motion associated with the fixed angular momenta of individual spins. Our analysis of the Lyapunov spectra reveals that the largest Lyapunov exponent agrees with the Lyapunov exponent that determines the local instability of each individual spin moving under the influence of all other spins. Within this picture, we introduce a rigorous and simple test of ergodicity for the spin motion, and use it to identify when classical chaos is both strong and global in phase space. In the quantum domain, our analysis of the Hamiltonian matrix in a proper representation allows us to obtain the conditions for the onset of quantum chaos as a function of the model parameters. From the comparison between the quantum and classical domains, we demonstrate that quantum quantities, such as the local density of states (LDOS) and the shape of the chaotic eigenfunctions written in the non-interacting many-body basis, have well-defined classical counterparts. Another central finding is the relationship between the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy and the width of the LDOS, which is useful for studies of many-body dynamics.