The Quantum Kicked Rotor

Abstract

The quantum kicked rotor has served as a model for testing the ideas of quantum chaos since the field's inception. In this thesis we present an overview of the kicked rotor, both from a semiclassical standpoint as well as from a purely quantum standpoint. At the heart of our kicked rotor model is a generalization of previously considered boundary conditions, corresponding to the presence of a magnetic field. We show that in order for a semiclassical wavefunction of the form e^i/h*S(q) to exist, S(q) must satisfy an iterative version of the classical Hamilton-Jacobi equation. From the purely quantum perspective, the new boundary conditions lead to irrational momentum eigenvalues and a new eigenvalue equation governing the evolution of the system. We develop methods for finding and visualizing solutions of this equation, and we show that the choice of boundary conditions radically affects the localization of the system's eigenstates.