Universitätsbibliothek
Weimar Open Access

Ezio Venturino, F. Raciti

• The theory of random matrices, or random matrix theory, RMT in what follows, has been developed at the beginning of the fties to describe the sta- tistical properties of energy levels of complex quantum systems, [1], [2], [3]. In the early eighties it has enjoyed renewed interest since it has been recognized as a very useful tool in the study of numerous physical systems. Specically, it is veryThe theory of random matrices, or random matrix theory, RMT in what follows, has been developed at the beginning of the fties to describe the sta- tistical properties of energy levels of complex quantum systems, [1], [2], [3]. In the early eighties it has enjoyed renewed interest since it has been recognized as a very useful tool in the study of numerous physical systems. Specically, it is very useful in the analysis of chaotic quantum systems. In fact, in the last years many papers appeared about the problem of quantum chaos which implies the quantization of systems whose underlying classical dynamics is irregular (i.e. chaotic). The simplest models considered in this eld are billi- ards of various shapes. From the the classical point of view, a point particle in a 2-dimensional billiard displays regular or irregular motion depending on the shape of the billiard; for instance motion in a rectangular or circular billi- ard is regular thanks to the symmetries of the boundary. On the other hand, billiards of arbitrary shapes imply chaotic motion, i.e. exponential diver- gence of initially nearby trajectories. In order to study quantum billiards we have to consider the Schroedinger equation in various 2-dimensional domains. The eigenvalues of the Schroedinger equation represent the allowed energy levels of our quantum particle in the billiard under consideration, while the eigenfunction norms represent the probability density of nding the particle in a certain position. The question of quantum chaos is whether the charac- ter of the classical motion (regular or chaotic) can in uence some properties…