02-334 Frederic FAURE, Stephane NONNENMACHER, Stephan DE BIEVRE

Scarred eigenstates for quantum cat maps of minimal periods (415K, tar.gz - compressed LaTeX file final.tex + 16 .eps files) Jul 30, 02

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Abstract. In this paper we construct a sequence of eigenfunctions of the ``quantum Arnold's cat map'' that, in the semiclassical limit, show a strong scarring phenomenon on the periodic orbits of the dynamics. More precisely, those states have a semiclassical limit measure that is the sum of 1/2 the normalized Lebesgue measure on the torus plus 1/2 the normalized Dirac measure concentrated on any a priori given periodic orbit of the dynamics. It is known (the Schnirelman theorem) that ``most'' sequences of eigenfunctions equidistribute on the torus. The sequences we construct therefore provide an example of an exception to this general rule. Our method of construction and proof exploits the existence of special values of Planck's constant for which the quantum period of the map is relatively ``short'', and a sharp control on the evolution of coherent states up to this time scale. We also provide a pointwise description of these states in phase space, which uncovers their ``hyperbolic'' structure in the vicinity of the fixed points and yields more precise localization estimates.

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