Resummation of classical and semiclassical periodic orbit formulas

Abstract

The convergence properties of cycle expanded periodic orbit expressions for the spectra of classical and semiclassical time evolution operators have been studied for the open three disk billiard. We present evidence that both the classical and the semiclassical Selberg zeta function have poles. Applying a Padé approximation on the expansions of the full Euler products, as well as on the individual dynamical zeta functions in the products, we calculate the leading poles and the zeros of the improved expansions with the first few poles removed. The removal of poles tends to change the simple linear exponential convergence of the Selberg zeta functions to an $\exp\{-n^{3/2}\}$ decay in the classical case and to an $\exp\{-n^2\}$ decay in the semiclassical case. The leading poles of the $j$th dynamical zeta function are found to equal the leading zeros of the $j+1$th one: However, in contrast to the zeros, which are all simple, the poles seem without exception to be {\em double}\/. The poles are therefore in general {\em not}\/ completely cancelled by zeros, which has earlier been suggested. The only complete cancellations occur in the classical Selberg zeta function between the poles (double) of the first and the zeros (squared) of the second dynamical zeta function. Furthermore, we find strong indications that poles are responsible for the presence of spurious zeros in periodic orbit quantized spectra and that these spectra can be greatly improved by removing the leading poles, e.g.\ by using the Padé technique.