Quantal-Classical Duality and the Semiclassical Trace Formula

Abstract

We consider Hamiltonian systems which can be described both classically and quantum mechanically. Trace formulas establish links between the energy spectra of the quantum description and the spectrum of actions of periodic orbits in the classical description. This duality is investigated in the present paper. The duality holds for chaotic as well as for integrable systems. For billiards the quantal spectrum (eigenvalues of the Helmholtz equation) and the classical spectrum (lengths of periodic orbits) are two manifestations of the billiard's boundary. The trace formula expresses this link as a Fourier transform relation between the corresponding spectral densities. It follows that the two-point statistics are also simply related. The universal correlations of the quantal spectrum are well known, consequently one can deduce the classical universal correlations. An explicit expression for the scale of the classical correlations is derived and interpreted. This allows a further extension of the formalism to the case of complex billiard systems, and in particular to the most interesting case of diffusive system. The concept of classical correlations allows a better understanding of the so-called diagonal approximation and its breakdown. It also paves the way towards a semiclassical theory that is capable of global description of spectral statistics beyond the breaktime. An illustrative application is the derivation of the disorder-limited breaktime in case of a disordered chain, thus obtaining a semiclassical theory for localization. A numerical study of classical correlations in the case of the 3D Sinai billiard is presented. We gain a direct understanding of specific statistical properties of the classical spectrum, as well as their semiclassical manifestation in the quantal spectrum.