English

Quantum chaos and macroscopic realism as no-signaling in time

Quantum Physics 2025-12-23 v2

Abstract

Macroscopic realism is a set of assumptions about how we experience the world at a classical level. While the Leggett-Garg inequalities are temporal correlations that are violated by quantum systems not obeying such macrorealism, the no-signaling in time condition is also a necessary condition. This compares measurement outcomes with and without prior measurements. As dynamics and correlations play a central role in these measures, this paper explores the effects of regular versus chaotic dynamics on the violations of macroscopic realism. We observe a close connection between a 3 point out-of-time-order correlator and the conditional probabilities of measurement, and we find unmistakable imprints of chaos on the violations of macrorealism. We provide qualitative semiclassical reasoning for the numerical results involving a kicked top, and for two important initial states that behave very differently.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1912.07097,
  title  = {Quantum chaos and macroscopic realism as no-signaling in time},
  author = {Manish Ramchander and Arul Lakshminarayan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.07097},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Paper has been updated substantially with new content and figures