Zitterbewegung and symmetry switching in Klein's four-group

Abstract

Zitterbewegung is the exotic phenomenon associated either with the relativistic electron-positron rapid oscillation or to the electron-hole transitions in the narrow gap semiconductors. In the present work, we enlarge concept of Zitterbewegung and show that the trembling motion may occur due to the dramatic changes in the symmetry of the system. In particular, we exploit a paradigmatic model of quantum chaos, quantum mathematical pendulum (universal Hamiltonian). The symmetry group of this system is the Klein's four-group that possess three invariant subgroups. The energy spectrum of the system parametrically depends on the height of the potential barrier, and contains degenerate and non-degenerate areas, corresponding to the different symmetry subgroups. Change in the height of the potential barrier switches the symmetry subgroup and leads to the trembling motion. We analyzed mean square fluctuations of the velocity operator and observed that trembling enhances for the highly excited states. We observed the link between the phenomena of trembling motion and uncertainty relations of noncommutative operators of the system.