Recurrences in an isolated quantum many-body system

It is one of the most astonishing results of physics--when a complex system is left alone, it will return to its initial state with almost perfect precision. Gas particles, for example, chaotically swirling around in a container, will return almost exactly to their starting positions after some time. The Poincaré Recurrence Theorem is the foundation of modern chaos theory. For decades, scientists have investigated how this theorem can be applied to the world of quantum physics. Now, researchers...