Chaos in Jahn-Teller Rattling

Abstract

We unveil chaotic behavior hidden in the energy spectrum of a Jahn-Teller ion vibrating in a cubic anharmonic potential as a typical model for rattling in cage-structure materials. When we evaluate the nearest-neighbor level-spacing distribution $P(s)$ of eigenenergies of the present oscillator system, we observe the transition of $P(s)$ from the Poisson to the Wigner distribution with the increase of cubic anharmonicity, showing the occurrence of chaos in the anharmonic Jahn-Teller vibration. The energy scale of the chaotic region is specified from the analysis of $P(s)$ and we discuss a possible way to observe chaotic behavior in the experiment of specific heat. It is an intriguing possibility that chaos in nonlinear physics could be detected by a standard experiment in condensed matter physics.