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Have quantum scars been observed?

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Abstract

Wilkinsonet al.1 have reported observations of oscillations in the current of a resonant tunnelling diode in a magnetic field. They proposed that this provides the first direct experimental evidence for quantum ‘scarring’ in a real chaotic system. But we believe that Wilkinson et al. have not observed quantum scars in the usual sense. They considered a far-from semiclassical regime where current theories of scarring are not valid. Demonstrating these effects in a solid-state device is a tremendous achievement. However, we believe that even in the semiclassical limit this type of experiment does not go beyond other experiments on atoms in magnetic fields as a probe of scarring.

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Figure 1: Quantum eigenstates which dominate tunnelling for:

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT, London, UK

    T. S. Monteiro

  2. Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, 4 Place Jussieu, Tour 12, Premier Etage, Paris, F-75252 Cedex 05, France

    D. Delande

  3. Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, Prince Consort Road, SW7 2BZ, London, UK

    J.-P. Connerade

Authors
  1. T. S. Monteiro
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  2. D. Delande
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  3. J.-P. Connerade
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Monteiro, T., Delande, D. & Connerade, JP. Have quantum scars been observed?. Nature 387, 863–864 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/43096

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