SPATIAL CORRELATIONS OF CHAOTIC WAVE FUNCTIONS

Abstract

The statistics of the spatial correlations of eigenfunctions is investigated in chaotic systems with or without time-reversal symmetry. It is rigorously shown that wave functions corresponding to different energy levels are uncorrelated in space. At a given eigenstate, we find that though the background of wave function density fluctuates strongly, there exist the long-standing Friedel oscillations in wave function intensity. The joint distribution of the intensity at two separate space points is presented by the universal law with one parameter — the average amplitude correlation. This distribution encompasses two different regions: One with an independent joint distribution for small values of density fluctuations, and the other showing an increasing spatial correlation for the large fluctuations.