Quantum information scrambling and chemical reactions.

ABSTRACT: The ultimate regularity of quantum mechanics creates a tension with the assumption of classical chaos used in many of our pictures of chemical reaction dynamics. Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) provide a quantum analog to the Lyapunov exponents that characterize classical chaotic motion. Maldacena, Shenker, and Stanford have suggested a fundamental quantum bound for the rate of information scrambling, which resembles a limit suggested by Herzfeld for chemical reaction rates. Here, we use OTOCs to study model reactions based on a double-well reaction coordinate coupled to anharmonic oscillators or to a continuum oscillator bath. Upon cooling, as one enters the tunneling regime where the reaction rate does not strongly depend on temperature, the quantum Lyapunov exponent can approach t

SUBMITTER: Zhang C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11009637 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature