Delocalized and resonant quantum transport in nonlinear generalizations of the kicked rotor model

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2005 Mar;71(3 Pt 2A):036220. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.71.036220. Epub 2005 Mar 24.

Abstract

We analyze the effects of a nonlinear cubic perturbation on the delta-kicked rotor. We consider two different models, in which the nonlinear term acts either in the position or in the momentum representation. We numerically investigate the modifications induced by the nonlinearity in the quantum transport in both localized and resonant regimes and a comparison between the results for the two models is presented. Analyzing the momentum distributions and the increase of the mean square momentum, we find that the quantum resonances asymptotically are very stable with respect to nonlinear perturbation of the rotor's phase evolution. For an intermittent time regime, the nonlinearity even enhances the resonant quantum transport, leading to superballistic motion.