Nonadiabatic couplings and chaos in a dynamical potential well model

The mechanism of nonadiabatic couplings between quantum states of a potential well model with finite heights and a dynamical width coordinate is investigated in detail. The system is described in a mixed quantum-classical approach in which the oscillations of the classical width coordinate induce transitions between the quantum states of a particle trapped inside the well. The dynamics of the system is considered in detail for transitions between two quantum states and resulting coupled Bloch-oscillator equations. Poincaré sections showing a mixed phase space with chaotic and regular behaviour are found by a numerical investigation. In particular, chaos results for high energies of the well width oscillations when the mixing between the adiabatic reference states is strong. The inclusion of relaxation is considered and shown that in this case the regimes of chaotic and regular dynamics are not separated as in the relaxation free case. In particular, for some initial conditions chaos can become a transient phenomena placed in a time window between regular oscillations of the system.