The exponential growth of the out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) has been proposed as a quantum signature of classical chaos. The growth rate is expected to coincide with the classical Lyapunov exponent. This quantum-classical correspondence has been corroborated for the kicked rotor and the stadium billiard, which are one-body chaotic systems. The conjecture has not yet been validated for realistic systems with interactions. We make progress in this direction by studying the OTOC in the Dicke model, where two-level atoms cooperatively interact with a quantized radiation field. For parameters where the model is chaotic in the classical limit, the OTOC increases exponentially in time with a rate that closely follows the classical Lyapunov exponent.

Quantum chaos refers to signatures of classical chaos found in the quantum domain. Recently, it has become common to equate the exponential behavior of out-of-time order correlators (OTOCs) with quantum chaos. The quantum-classical correspondence between the OTOC exponential growth and chaos in the classical limit has indeed been corroborated theoretically for some systems and there are several projects to do the same experimentally. The Dicke model, in particular, which has a regular and a chaotic regime, is currently under intense investigation by experiments with trapped ions. We show, however, that for experimentally accessible parameters, OTOCs can grow exponentially also when the Dicke model is in the regular regime. The same holds for the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, which is integrable and also experimentally realizable. The exponential behavior in these cases are due to unstable stationary points, not to chaos.

We study the nonintegrable Dicke model and its integrable approximation, the Tavis-Cummings model, as functions of both the coupling constant and the excitation energy. Excited-state quantum phase transitions (ESQPT) are found analyzing the density of states in the semiclassical limit and comparing it with numerical results for the quantum case in large Hilbert spaces, taking advantage of efficient methods recently developed. Two different ESQPTs are identified in both models, which are signaled as singularities in the semiclassical density of states; one static ESQPT occurs for any coupling, whereas a dynamic ESQPT is observed only in the superradiant phase. The role of the unstable fixed points of the Hamiltonian semiclassical flux in the occurrence of the ESQPTs is discussed and determined. Numerical evidence is provided that shows that the semiclassical results describe very well the tendency of the quantum energy spectrum for any coupling in both models. Therefore, the semiclassical density of states can be used to study the statistical properties of the fluctuation in the spectra, a study that is presented in a companion paper.

The relation between the onset of chaos and critical phenomena, like quantum phase transitions (QPTs) and excited-state quantum phase transitions (ESQPTs), is analyzed for atom-field systems. While it has been speculated that the onset of hard chaos is associated with ESQPTs based in the resonant case, the off-resonant cases, and a close look at the vicinity of the QPTs in resonance, show clearly that both phenomena, ESQPTs and chaos, respond to different mechanisms. The results are supported in a detailed numerical study of the dynamics of the semiclassical Hamiltonian of the Dicke model. The appearance of chaos is quantified calculating the largest Lyapunov exponent for a wide sample of initial conditions in the whole available phase space for a given energy. The percentage of the available phase space with chaotic trajectories is evaluated as a function of energy and coupling between the qubit and bosonic part, allowing us to obtain maps in the space of coupling and energy, where ergodic properties are observed in the model. Different sets of Hamiltonian parameters are considered, including resonant and off-resonant cases.

The nonintegrable Dicke model and its integrable approximation, the Tavis-Cummings model, are studied as functions of both the coupling constant and the excitation energy. The present contribution extends the analysis presented in the previous paper by focusing on the statistical properties of the quantum fluctuations in the energy spectrum and their relation with the excited-state quantum phase transitions. These properties are compared with the dynamics observed in the semiclassical versions of the models. The presence of chaos for different energies and coupling constants is exhibited, employing Poincar\'e sections and Peres lattices in the classical and quantum versions, respectively. A clear correspondence between the classical and quantum result is found for systems containing between $\mathcal{N}=80$ and 200 atoms. A measure of the Wigner character of the energy spectrum for different couplings and energy intervals is also presented employing the statistical Anderson-Darling test. It is found that in the Dicke model, for any coupling, a low-energy regime with regular states is always present. The richness of the onset of chaos is discussed both for finite quantum systems and for the semiclassical limit, which is exact when the number of atoms in the system tends to infinite.

In a classically chaotic system that is ergodic, any trajectory will be arbitrarily close to any point of the available phase space after a long time, filling it uniformly. Using Born’s rules to connect quantum states with probabilities, one might then expect that all quantum states in the chaotic regime should be uniformly distributed in phase space. This simplified picture was shaken by the discovery of quantum scarring, where some eigenstates are concentrated along unstable periodic orbits. Despite that, it is widely accepted that most eigenstates of chaotic models are indeed ergodic. Our results show instead that all eigenstates of the chaotic Dicke model are actually scarred. They also show that even the most random states of this interacting atom-photon system never occupy more than half of the available phase space. Quantum ergodicity is achievable only as an ensemble property, after temporal averages are performed.