The Quantum Foucault Modes

Abstract

The driven quantum harmonic oscillator is fundamental to a number of important physical systems. Here, we consider the quantum harmonic oscillator under non-Hermitian, PT-symmetric driving, showing that the resulting set of Wigner-space trajectories of an initial coherent state is identical to the set of real-space trajectories of the classical Foucault pendulum. Remarkably, in the case mapped from the trivial 1D pendulum, the corresponding quantum dynamics are those of an oscillator with periodically evolving momentum but fixed position, a novel type of dynamics which are forbidden in classical systems.