The Onset of Chaos in the Quantum Hard-Sphere Gas

Abstract

We show that the condition for the appearance of quantum chaos (Wigner-Dyson distribution of energy eigenvalues, gaussian-random energy eigenfunctions) in a dilute gas of many hard spheres is $\lambda \ll \ell$, where $\lambda$ is the wavelength of a typical particle and $\ell$ is the mean free path between collisions. For fermions with Fermi wavelength $\lambda_F \ll \ell$, this implies that all energy eigenstates, including the ground state, are chaotic. Physical implications are discussed.