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We introduce three representative topics in semi-classical analysis. Starting from the correspondence between classical and quantum mechanics, basic semi-classical analysis tools and results are presented. The three topics are investigated in the light of the introduced techniques allowing one to emphasize different aspects of semi-classical analysis., Comment: This article presents some ideas and applications of semi-classical analysis

In this paper, we introduce Wick's quantization on groups and discuss its links with Kohn-Nirenberg's. By quantization, we mean an operation that associates an operator to a symbol. The notion of symbols for both quantizations is based on representation theory via the group Fourier transform and the Plancherel theorem. As an application, we give a simple proof of Garding inequalities for three globally symbolic pseudo-differential calculi on groups.

This paper is devoted to the construction of approximations of the propagator associated with a semi-classical matrix-valued Schr\"odinger operator with symbol presenting smooth eigenvalues crossings. Inspired by the approach of the theoretical chemists Herman and Kluk who propagated continuous superpositions of Gaussian wave-packets for scalar equations, we consider frozen and thawed Gaussian initial value representations that incorporate classical transport and branching processes along a hopping hypersurface. Based on the Gaussian wave-packet framework, our result relies on an accurate analysis of the solutions of the associated Schr\"odinger equation for data that are vector-valued wave-packets. We prove that these solutions are asymptotic to wavepackets at any order in terms of the semi-classical parameter.

In this paper, we present recent results about the developement of a semiclassical approach in the setting of nilpotent Lie groups and nilmanifolds. We focus on two-step nilmanifolds and exhibit some properties of the weak limits of sequence of densities associated with eigenfunctions of a sub-Laplacian. We emphasize the influence of the geometry on these properties.

We prove existence and uniqueness results for the time-dependent Hartree approximation arising in quantum dynamics. The Hartree equations of motion form a coupled system of nonlinear Schr{\"o}dinger equations for the evolution of product state approximations. They are a prominent example for dimension reduction in the context of the the time-dependent Dirac-Frenkel variational principle. We handle the case of Coulomb potentials thanks to Strichartz estimates. Our main result addresses a general setting where the nonlinear coupling cannot be considered as a perturbation. The proof uses a recursive construction that is inspired by the standard approach for the Cauchy problem associated to symmetric quasilinear hyperbolic equations., Comment: 25 pages

In this paper, we analyze the propagation of a wave packet through a conical intersection. This question has been addressed for Gaussian wave packets in the 90s by George Hagedorn and we consider here a more general setting. We focus on the case of Schr{\"o}dinger equation but our methods are general enough to be adapted to systems presenting codimension 2 crossings and to codimension 3 ones with specific geometric conditions. Our main Theorem gives explicit transition formulas for the profiles when passing through a conical crossing point, including precise computation of the transformation of the phase. Its proof is based on a normal form approach combined with the use of superadiabatic projectors and the analysis of their degeneracy close to the crossing.

In this paper, we consider the semi-classical setting constructed on nilpotent graded Lie groups by means of representation theory. We analyze the effects of the pull-back by diffeomorphisms on pseudodifferential operators. We restrict to diffeomorphisms that preserve the filtration and prove that they are Pansu differentiable. We show that the pull-back of a semi-classical pseudodifferential operator by such a diffeomorphism has a semi-classical symbol that is expressed at leading order in terms of the Pansu differential. We interpret the geometric meaning of this invariance in the setting of filtered manifolds., Comment: 25 pages

Numerical studies are presented to assess error estimates for a separable (Hartree) approximation for dynamically evolving composite quantum systems which exhibit distinct scales defined by their mass and frequency ratios. The relevant error estimates were formally described in our previous work [I. Burghardt, R. Carles, C. Fermanian Kammerer, B. Lasorne, C. Lasser, J. Phys. A. 54, 414002 (2021)]. Specifically, we consider a representative two-dimensional tunneling system where a double well and a harmonic coordinate are cubically coupled. The timedependent Hartree approximation is compared with a fully correlated solution, for different parameter regimes. The impact of the coupling and the resulting correlations are quantitatively assessed in terms of a time-dependent reaction probability along the tunneling coordinate. We show that the numerical error is correctly predicted on moderate time scales by a theoretically derived error estimate.

We study the propagation of wavepackets along weakly curved interfaces between topologically distinct media. Our Hamiltonian is an adiabatic modulation of Dirac operators omnipresent in the topological insulators literature. Using explicit formulas for straight edges, we construct a family of solutions that propagates, for long times, unidirectionally and dispersion-free along the curved edge. We illustrate our results through various numerical simulations., Comment: 31 pages, 8 figures

We consider composite quantum-dynamical systems that can be partitioned into weakly interacting subsystems, similar to system-bath type situations. Using a factorized wave function ansatz, we mathematically characterize dynamical scale separation.Specifically, we investigate a coupling r{\'e}gime that is partially flat, i.e., slowly varying with respect to one set of variables, for example, those of the bath. Further, we study the situation where one of the sets of variables is semiclassically scaled and derive a quantum-classical formulation. In both situations, we propose two schemes of dimension reduction: one based on Taylor expansion (collocation) and the other one based on partial averaging (mean-field). We analyze the error for the wave function and for the action of observables, obtaining comparable estimates for both approaches. The present study is the first step towards a general analysis of scale separation in the context of tensorized wavefunction representations., Comment: Title changed, Section 3.3 reorganized, new Section 6 (numerical example)

We study a Schr{\"o}dinger equation modeling the dynamics of an electron in a crystal in the asymptotic regime of small wavelength comparable to the characteristic scale of the crystal. Using Floquet Bloch decomposition, we obtain a description of the limit of time averaged energy densities. We make rather general assumption assuming that the initial data are uniformly bounded in a high order Sobolev spaces and that the crossings between Bloch modes are at worst conical. We show that despite the singularity they create, conical crossing do not trap the energy and do not prevent dispersion. We also investigate the interactions between modes that can occurred when there are some degenerate crossings between Bloch bands.

We give necessary and sufficient conditions for the controllability of a Schr\''odinger equation involving the sub-Laplacian of a nilmanifold obtained by taking the quotient of a group of Heisenberg type by one of its discrete sub-groups.This class of nilpotent Lie groups is a major example of stratified Lie groups of step 2. The sub-Laplacian involved in these Schr\''odinger equations is subelliptic, and, contrarily to what happens for the usual elliptic Schr\''odinger equation for example on flat tori or on negatively curved manifolds, there exists a minimal time of controllability. The main tools used in the proofs are (operator-valued) semi-classical measures constructed by use of representation theory and a notion of semi-classical wave packets that we introduce here in the context of groups of Heisenberg type.

We consider independent electrons in a periodic crystal in their ground state, and turn on a uniform electric field at some prescribed time. We rigorously define the current per unit volume and study its properties using both linear response and adiabatic theory. Our results provide a unified framework for various phenomena such as the quantification of Hall conductivity of insulators with broken time-reversibility, the ballistic regime of electrons in metals, Bloch oscillations in the long-time response of metals, and the static conductivity of graphene. We identify explicitly the regime in which each holds.

This paper is devoted to a generalisation of the quantum adiabatic theorem to a nonlinear setting. We consider a Hamiltonian operator which depends on the time variable and on a finite number of parameters and acts on a separable Hilbert space of which we select a fixed basis. We study an evolution equation in which this Hamiltonian acts on the unknown vector, while depending on coordinates of the unknown vector in the selected basis, thus making the equation nonlinear. We prove existence of solutions to this equation and consider their asymptotics in the adiabatic regime, i.e. when the Hamiltonian is slowly varying in time. Under natural spectral hypotheses, we prove the existence of normalised time dependent vectors depending on the Hamiltonian only, called instantaneous nonlinear eigenvectors, and show the existence of solutions which remain close to these vectors, up to a rapidly oscillating phase, in the adiabatic regime. We first investigate the case of bounded operators and then exhibit a set of spectral assumptions under which the result extends to unbounded Hamiltonians.

We study nuclear propagation through avoided crossings of electron energy levels. We construct a surface hopping semigroup, which gives an Egorov-type description of the dynamics. The underlying time-dependent Schroedinger equation has a two-by-two matrix-valued potential, whose eigenvalue surfaces have an avoided crossing. Using microlocal normal forms reminiscent of the Landau-Zener problem, we prove convergence to the true solution in the semi-classical limit., Comment: 44 pages

In this article, we propose a new numerical model for computation of the transport of electrons in a graphene device. The underlying quantum model for graphene is a massless Dirac equation, whose eigenvalues display a conical singularity responsible for non adiabatic transitions between the two modes. We first derive a kinetic model which takes the form of two Boltzmann equations coupled by a collision operator modeling the non-adiabatic transitions. This collision term includes a Landau-Zener transfer term and a jump operator whose presence is essential in order to ensure a good energy conservation during the transitions. We propose an algorithmic realization of the semi-group solving the kinetic model, by a particle method. We give analytic justification of the model and propose a series of numerical experiments studying the influences of the various sources of errors between the quantum and the kinetic models.

We look at the long-time behaviour of solutions to a semi-classical Schr\"odinger equation on the torus. We consider time scales which go to infinity when the semi-classical parameter goes to zero and we associate with each time-scale the set of semi-classical measures associated with all possible choices of initial data. On each classical invariant torus, the structure of semi-classical measures is described in terms of two-microlocal measures, obeying explicit propagation laws. We apply this construction in two directions. We first analyse the regularity of semi-classical measures, and we emphasize the existence of a threshold : for time-scales below this threshold, the set of semi-classical measures contains measures which are singular with respect to Lebesgue measure in the "position" variable, while at (and beyond) the threshold, all the semi-classical measures are absolutely continuous in the "position" variable, reflecting the dispersive properties of the equation. Second, the techniques of two- microlocal analysis introduced in the paper are used to prove semiclassical observability estimates. The results apply as well to general quantum completely integrable systems., Comment: This article contains and develops the results of hal-00765928. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1211.1518

The present paper is dedicated to the proof of dispersive estimates on stratified Lie groups of step 2, for the linear Schr\"odinger equation involving a sublaplacian. It turns out that the propagator behaves like a wave operator on a space of the same dimension p as the center of the group, and like a Schr\"odinger operator on a space of the same dimension k as the radical of the canonical skew-symmetric form, which suggests a decay with exponant -(k+p-1)/2. In this article, we identify a property of the canonical skew-symmetric form under which we establish optimal dispersive estimates with this rate. The relevance of this property is discussed through several examples.

We consider a system of two coupled ordinary differential equations which appears as an envelope equation in Bose-Einstein Condensation. This system can be viewed as a nonlinear extension of the celebrated model introduced by Landau and Zener. We show how the nonlinear system may appear from different physical models. We focus our attention on the large time behavior of the solution. We show the existence of a nonlinear scattering operator, which is reminiscent of long range scattering for the nonlinear Schrodinger equation, and which can be compared with its linear counterpart., Comment: 33 pages. Major revision in order to fix a flaw in the case F_1 != F_2 (the case F_1=F_2 is substantially simplified)

In this paper, we study a system of thermoelasticity with a degenerated second order operator in the Heat equation. We analyze the evolution of the energy density of a family of solutions. We consider two cases: when the set of points where the ellipticity of the Heat operator fails is included in a hypersurface and when it is an open set. In the first case and under special assumptions, we prove that the evolution of the energy density is the one of a damped wave equation: propagation along the rays of geometric optic and damping according to a microlocal process. In the second case, we show that the energy density propagates along rays which are distortions of the rays of geometric optic., Comment: 28 pages

We consider the propagation of wave packets for a one-dimensional nonlinear Schrodinger equation with a matrix-valued potential, in the semi-classical limit. For an initial coherent state polarized along some eigenvector, we prove that the nonlinear evolution preserves the separation of modes, in a scaling such that nonlinear effects are critical (the envelope equation is nonlinear). The proof relies on a fine geometric analysis of the role of spectral projectors, which is compatible with the treatment of nonlinearities. We also prove a nonlinear superposition principle for these adiabatic wave packets., Comment: 21 pages, no figure

We consider the propagation of wave packets for the nonlinear Schrodinger equation, in the semi-classical limit. We establish the existence of a critical size for the initial data, in terms of the Planck constant: if the initial data are too small, the nonlinearity is negligible up to the Ehrenfest time. If the initial data have the critical size, then at leading order the wave function propagates like a coherent state whose envelope is given by a nonlinear equation, up to a time of the same order as the Ehrenfest time. We also prove a nonlinear superposition principle for these nonlinear wave packets., Comment: 27 pages

In this article, we analyze the propagation of Wigner measures of a family of solutions to a system of semi-classical pseudodifferential equations presenting eigenvalues crossings on hypersurfaces. We prove the propagation along classical trajectories under a geometric condition which is satisfied for example as soon as the Hamiltonian vector fields are transverse or tangent at finite order to the crossing set. We derive resolvent estimates for semi-classical Schr\"odinger operator with matrix-valued potential under a geometric condition of the same type on the crossing set and we analyze examples of degenerate situations where one can prove transfers between the modes., Comment: 27 pages

In this survey, our aim is to emphasize the main known limitations to the use of Wigner measures for Schrodinger equations. After a short review of successful applications of Wigner measures to study the semi-classical limit of solutions to Schrodinger equations, we list some examples where Wigner measures cannot be a good tool to describe high frequency limits. Typically, the Wigner measures may not capture effects which are not negligible at the pointwise level, or the propagation of Wigner measures may be an ill-posed problem. In the latter situation, two families of functions may have the same Wigner measures at some initial time, but different Wigner measures for a larger time. In the case of systems, this difficulty can partially be avoided by considering more refined Wigner measures such as two-scale Wigner measures; however, we give examples of situations where this quadratic approach fails., Comment: Survey, 26 pages