Chaos and dynamical complexity in the quantum to classical transition

Abstract We study the largest Lyapunov exponents λ and dynamical complexity for an open quantum driven double-well oscillator, mapping its dependence on coupling to the environment Γ as well as effective Planck’s constant β 2 . We show that in general λ increases with effective Hilbert space size (as β decreases, or the system becomes larger and closer to the classical limit). However, if the classical limit is regular, there is always a quantum system with λ greater than the classical λ , with several examples where the quantum system is chaotic even though the classical system is regular. While the quantum chaotic attractors are generally of the same family as the classical attractors, we also find quantum attractors with no classical counterpart. Contrary to the standard wisdom, the correspondence limit can thus be the most difficult to achieve for certain classically chaotic systems. These phenomena occur in experimentally accessible regimes.