Among possible options for initial conditions, we choose the state
, an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian
, since we are particularly interested in the discrepancy between
and
. The
Figure 6(a) and
Figure 6(b) illustrate the propagation of the wave function
in the
q-representation and the Husimi representation, respectively. We can see that the amplitude of the wave function
for
increases rapidly with time, and after four steps it already reaches a profile similar to
. Note that the saturated amplitude of
in the interval
is slightly higher than the amplitude of
.
The Husimi representation shows us an explicit wave packet propagation in phase space. As time evolves, the dominant part of the wave function passes through the fixed point and propagates along the separatrix. After five steps, the amplitude spreads almost uniformly along the separatrix. This tells us that the plateau with oscillation observed in appears as the result of the tunneling transport along the separatrix associated with the fixed point .
4.1. Complex Dynamics of and
In this section we explore the classical dynamics and in the complex domain. To do this, we introduce notations for the real and imaginary parts as q= x + iy, and p = u +iv ,respectively.
First we observe the solution curves in the complex plane under the flow
. They lie on the equi-energy surface specified by the condition
. To obtain these curves, we first find the turning points
, marked by the black "×" in
Figure 7, and then solve the equations of motion for the Hamiltonian
along the imaginary time axis
to connect the turning points
. Recall that this solution curve, shown by the thick black curve, is nothing more than the instanton. Along the instanton curve we place equally spaced initial conditions, from each of which we solve the equations of motion along the real time axis
, yielding a set of closed curves shown in green.
As for the dynamics of the map
in the complex plane, the multivaluedness of the potential function,
generates non-trivial behavior. To see this, we focus on the dynamics at the points
, and (±1/2, ±1/2), respectively. The equations of motion of the Hamiltonian flow
are written explicitly as
where (α
1,α
2,α
3,α
4)=(1,-1,1,1) for (x,u)=(0,0),(α
1,α
2,α
3,α
4)=(-1,-1,-1,1) for (x, u)=(±1/2,±1/2), and (α
1,α
2,α
3,α
4)=(-1,1,1,-1) for (x, u)=(0,±1/2). Since
, the solution curves shown in Equation (13) are restricted to the purely imaginary (
y,
v)-plane. Note that the fixed points (
y,
v) = (0, 0) of Equation (13) are all hyperbolic, and the right-hand sides of Equation (13) consist of monotonic and entire functions, so that the solution curves around (
y,
v)=(0,0) diverge monotonically to
y(
t),
v(
t) → ±∞ under forward time evolution (see
Figure 8).
The greens dots in
Figure 7 show the classical orbits
for which the initial points
are set along the instanton. We observe that all the orbits
preserve the energy
E as expected, but there are exceptions: the orbits starting at
are not bounded on the Hamiltonian flow
. As explained below, the multivaluedness of the function
for
leads to such anomalous behavior. In
Figure 7(b), the cyan dots show the projection of the itinerary of the orbit whose initial condition is placed on the instanton orbit onto the
-plane. We can see that the real part
of the orbit jumps among
,
, and
, while the real part (
) does not change under the Hamiltonian flow
[see eq:Heq].
This itinerary of the orbit can be understood by considering the derivative
of the potential function in the complex
q-plane. Introducing the new variable,
we find that the derivative
can be expressed as
where the arctangent function has an alternative expression,
which obviously has the branch points on the
z-plane at
, originating from the logarithmic function. Correspondingly, on the
q-plane
has the branch points at
.
Now, we consider the itinerary of the orbit starting from
. In other words, we set the real part of the initial points to
, but take various values for the imaginary parts
, assuming that
. Since the
is a multivalued function in the logarithmic type, the one-step iteration leads to an infinite number of images. Several studies have explored the complex dynamics associated with multivalued functions [
35], but here we consider only the one-step iteration to get rid of the complication caused by the multi-step iteration.
Since the stability at the origin
is hyperbolic [see fig:Hflow(a)], for any given
, there exists an initial condition
such that the next step satisfies the condition
. Recall that the Hamiltonian flow follows eq:Heq, so in the time evolution the
remains constant (
) and only the value of
changes. Therefore, in the
-plane, the point
passes over the branch points
before and after being mapped to the point
. After passing one of the branch points, the mapped point gains either
and
, reflecting the multivalued nature of the potential function (
11). As a result, the initial point
is mapped to the lattice points
. However, these lattice points can be identified as
and
by applying the periodic boundary condition. So the real parts
are mapped to
and
.
For the initial points in the -plane that do not pass the branch points within the single step iteration, they simply move along the solution curve governed by eq:Heq. The points generated by the multivalued nature of the map are again identified by applying the periodic boundary condition. Depending on the initial condition , the single step iteration in the -plane gives the map from to on the same flow curve. Note that the transition between different -planes does not occur because we here assume that the initial points in the -plane do not pass the branch points.
4.2. One-step propagation
As illustrated in
Figure 6, the plateau with oscillation observed in the eigenfunction
is reproduced by a wave function with relatively short time steps. This should make it possible to develop the semiclassical analysis in the time domain.
As explained in the previous section, the multivaluedness of the map leads to the transition that never occurs in the integrable Hamiltonian flow. The orbits of the Hamiltonian flow starting from the unstable fixed point do not change the real part, i.e., independent of the initial conditions , while the orbits generated by the map jump from (x0,u0) = (0,0) to either (x1,u1) = (1/2, ±1/2) or (−1/2, ±1/2) when they pass over the branch points, otherwise they stay at (x1, u1)=(0,0) Such a transition should explain the propagation of the wave function along the separatrix, but some issues need to be clarified before proceeding.
The first one is that the orbit in the complex plane is bifurcated even in one-step propagation, reflecting the multivaluedness of the map. The transition from
to
is observed in the one-step propagation of the quantum wave packet [see
Figure 10], while the orbit can jump from
to
as explained in the previous section. We expect that this can be solved by properly treating the Stokes phenomenon when performing the saddle point approximation. If the path from
to
gives rise to a divergent solution, then it should be removed from the final solution due to the Stokes phenomenon. For multi-step analysis, however, the multivaluedness of the map must be treated in each step, which makes semiclassical analysis difficult. As can be seen from
Figure 6, the plateau along the separatrix becomes more visible as time evolves. It may be a relatively short time, but we have to perform a semiclassical calculation with multiple time steps. This requires a more sophisticated approach to the Stokes phenomenon.
On the other hand,
Figure 10 shows that the plateau can also be made visible by increasing the parameter
. This may give us the impression that the one-step semiclassical analysis is sufficient to explain the observed phenomenon, and one can get rid of multi-step calculations. However, the problem is not simple, because as the parameter
is increased, the potential
and its derivative
become sharper, as shown in Figure 1(a). This reminds us of the diffraction effect [
36], which is expected to occur when the potential function has discontinuities. We should include higher-order terms in the saddle approximations, or more legitimately develop uniform approximation type arguments to cope with such situations.