Chaotic dynamics of a non-Hermitian kicked particle

J Phys Condens Matter. 2020 Nov 5;33(5). doi: 10.1088/1361-648X/abbcf8.

Abstract

We investigate both the classical and quantum dynamics of a kicked particle withPTsymmetry. In chaotic situation, the mean energy of the real parts of momentum linearly increases with time, and that of the imaginary momentum exponentially increases. There exists a breakdown time for chaotic diffusion, which is obtained both analytically and numerically. The quantum diffusion of this non-Hermitian system follows the classically chaotic diffusion of Hermitian case during the Ehrenfest time, after which it is completely suppressed. Interestingly, the Ehrenfest time decreases with the decrease of effective Planck constant or the increase of the strength of the non-Hermitian kicking potential. The exponential growth of the quantum out-of-time-order correlators (OTOC) during the initially short time interval characterizes the feature of the exponential diffusion of imaginary trajectories. The long time behavior of OTOC reflects the dynamical localization of quantum diffusion. The dynamical behavior of inverse participation ratio can quantify thePTsymmetry breaking, for which the rule of the phase transition points is numerically obtained.

Keywords: PT symmetry; dynamical localization; quantum chaos.