Chaotic Rabi oscillations under quasiperiodic perturbation

Abstract

We have found quantum chaos in a system consisting of two levels coupled through a time-dependent perturbation, when this perturbation is quasiperiodic with two incommensurate frequencies. This contrasts with the case of a monochromatic perturbation where the oscillations of the physical observables are nonchaotic, because of the Floquet theorem. The existence of chaos is confirmed by the observation of rapidly decreasing autocorrelation functions, and by a continuous Fourier spectrum for time-dependent fluctuations of physical observables.