Acknowledgements
The first edition of The Transition to Chaos appeared in 1992. It was based on
a series of lectures on classical and quantum chaos that I gave at the University
of California, San Diego, in 1987, and then at the Guangxi Normal University
in Guilin China in 1990. The first edition focused on the classical chaos theory
and the manifestations of chaos in bounded quantum systems. The second edition
was published in 2004 and included the manifestations of chaos in open quantum
systems with a strong emphasis on random matrix theory.
This third edition contains selected material from the previous editions but
focuses on topics that have become important to modern research, including the
influence of chaos on molecular scattering processes, lattice dynamics, gravitational
structures, radiation-matter interactions, and the thermalization and control of
quantum systems.
The book has been influenced, over the years, by discussions and collaborations
with numerous colleagues. I particularly wish to thank Katya Lindenberg of UCSD
who, years ago, invited me to write this series on chaos theory. I also wish to thank
Christof Jung for our collaborations on classical scattering theory. This third edition
has benefited from funding by the Robert A. Welch Foundation of Texas. Their
support has enabled a number of students to work on aspects of the research reported
here.
The University of Texas at Austin
Linda Reichl
Austin, TX, USA
August 2020
v
The first edition of The Transition to Chaos appeared in 1992. It was based on
a series of lectures on classical and quantum chaos that I gave at the University
of California, San Diego, in 1987, and then at the Guangxi Normal University
in Guilin China in 1990. The first edition focused on the classical chaos theory
and the manifestations of chaos in bounded quantum systems. The second edition
was published in 2004 and included the manifestations of chaos in open quantum
systems with a strong emphasis on random matrix theory.
This third edition contains selected material from the previous editions but
focuses on topics that have become important to modern research, including the
influence of chaos on molecular scattering processes, lattice dynamics, gravitational
structures, radiation-matter interactions, and the thermalization and control of
quantum systems.
The book has been influenced, over the years, by discussions and collaborations
with numerous colleagues. I particularly wish to thank Katya Lindenberg of UCSD
who, years ago, invited me to write this series on chaos theory. I also wish to thank
Christof Jung for our collaborations on classical scattering theory. This third edition
has benefited from funding by the Robert A. Welch Foundation of Texas. Their
support has enabled a number of students to work on aspects of the research reported
here.
The University of Texas at Austin
Linda Reichl
Austin, TX, USA
August 2020
v