Quasiperiodicity versus mixing instability in a kicked quantum system

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Abstract
A two-level system subject to quasiperiodically modulated kicking is investigated under the aspects of ergodic theory. For weak kicking strength κ the correlation functions exhibit quasiperiodic behavior, whose character changes with increasing κ as recurrences become infrequent. A quantum instability with a transition to mixing behavior that was suggested for similar models does not arise. Analytic results are obtained for the case where two of three characteristic frequencies are incommensurate.