Related papers: Bloch Sphere Catastrophes
Caustics occur widely in dynamics and take on shapes classified by catastrophe theory. At finite wavelengths they produce interference patterns containing networks of vortices (phase singularities). Here we investigate caustics in quantized…
We experimentally realize higher-order catastrophic structures in light fields to access the rich class of caustic swallowtail and butterfly beams. These beams present solutions of paraxial diffraction catastrophe integrals that are…
Caustics are natural phenomena in which nature concentrates the energy of waves. Although, they are known mostly in optics, caustics are intrinsic to all wave phenomena. For example, studies show that fluctuations in the profile of an ocean…
Classical chaos is marked by an extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, where infinitesimally close trajectories separate exponentially over time. In quantum mechanics, however, unitary evolution and the uncertainty principle preclude…
We describe a new class of nonequilibrium quantum many-body phenomena in the form of networks of caustics that dominate the many-body wavefunction in the semiclassical regime following a sudden quench. It includes the light cone-like…
Cosmological boundary conditions for particles and fields are often discussed as a Cauchy problem, in which configurations and conjugate momenta are specified on an "initial" time slice. But this is not the only way to specify boundary…
This paper explores the topologies of caustics observed in instruments that employ charged particles, such as electron and ion microscopes. These geometrical figures are studied here using catastrophe theory. The application of this…
Perturbing the external control parameters of nonlinear systems leads to dramatic changes of its bifurcations. A branch of singular theory, the catastrophe theory, analyses the generating function that depends on state and control…
Chaos is widely understood as being a consequence of sensitive dependence upon initial conditions. This is the result of an instability in phase space, which separates trajectories exponentially. Here, we demonstrate that this criterion…
Caustics are singularities that occur naturally in optical, hydrodynamic and quantum waves, giving rise to high amplitude patterns that can be described using catastrophe theory. In this paper we study caustics in a statistical field theory…
The defining feature of chaos is its hypersensitivity to small perturbations. However, we report a stability of branched flow against large perturbations where the classical trajectories are chaotic, showing that strong perturbations are…
Let a system of differential equations possess a saddle-node periodic orbit such that every orbit in its unstable manifold is homoclinic, i.e. the unstable manifold is a subset of the (global) stable manifold. We study several bifurcation…
I investigate the caustics produced by the fall of collisionless dark matter in and out of a galaxy in the limit of negligible velocity dispersion. The outer caustics are spherical shells enveloping the galaxy. The inner caustics are rings.…
We show through rigorous calculations that dielectric microspheres can be organized by an incident electromagnetic plane wave into stable cluster configurations, which we call photonic molecules. The long-range optical binding force arises…
Estimating collision rates is of immense importance in particle-laden flows. An economical way of doing this is to directly identify incidences of caustics, or extreme clustering, by tracking particle velocity gradients in the neighborhoods…
Ordered phases on curved substrates experience a complex interplay of ordering and intrinsic curvature, commonly producing frustration and singularities. This is an especially important issue in crystals as ever-smaller scale materials are…
We study in detail the dynamics of unstable two-level quantum systems by adopting the Bloch-vector representation. We identify a novel class of critical scenarios in which the so-called energy-level and decay-width vectors, ${\bf E}$ and…
There are many examples in physics of systems showing rogue wave behaviour, the generation of high amplitude events at low probability. Although initially studied in oceanography, rogue waves have now been seen in many other domains, with…
The dynamics of small, yet heavy, identical particles in turbulence exhibits singularities, called caustics, that lead to large fluctuations in the spatial particle-number density, and in collision velocities. For large particle, inertia…
Quantum trajectories defined in the de Broglie--Bohm theory provide a causal way to interpret physical phenomena. In this Letter, we use this formalism to analyze the short time dynamics induced by unstable periodic orbits in a classically…