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If we knew the present perfectly, could we predict the future? Classical physics, governed by Newton’s laws of motion, suggests that we should be able to. In a deterministic world, complete knowledge of the present uniquely determines the future. Yet nature tells a different story. Even simple systems can behave in ways that make long-term prediction practically impossible.
This phenomenon—chaos—arises from an extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. Tiny uncertainties grow exponentially, eventually destroying predictability. Chaos is not rare; it is ubiquitous. Weather systems, ecological dynamics, brain signals, the motion of a double pendulum, and even the famous three-body problem inspired by Newton’s study of the Solar System all exhibit chaotic behavior.
But what happens at the atomic scale, where the laws of quantum mechanics replace Newtonian dynamics? If classical trajectories cease to exist, what does chaos even mean? How can we detect or quantify it in quantum systems? And what are the implications for quantum information, quantum computation, and the spread of information in many-body systems?
In this talk, I will trace the historical development of quantum chaos, discuss recent advances, and present some results from my own work. |