Semiclassical description of quantum revivals

FABRICIO TOSCANO, RAÚL O. VALLEJOS, AND DIEGO WISNIACKI

PHYSICAL REVIEW E

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Año: 2009 vol. 80 p. 462181 - 462189

1539-3755

We test the ability of semiclassical theory to describe quantitatively the revival of quantum wave packets—a long time phenomena—in the one dimensional quartic oscillator (a Kerr type Hamiltonian). Two semiclassical theories are considered: time-dependent WKB and Van Vleck propagation. We show that both approaches describe with impressive accuracy the autocorrelation function and wave function up to times longer than the revival time. Moreover, in the Van Vleck approach, we can show analytically that the range of agreement extends to arbitrary long times.