Diffraction induced quantum chaos in a one-dimensional Bose gas

Abstract We investigate the Lieb–Liniger (LL) model of interacting one-dimensional bosons coupled to a localized impurity, modeled by a delta barrier. While the LL gas is integrable, the impurity breaks integrability and induces a transition towards quantum chaos. We show that the low-energy spectrum exhibits random-matrix statistics, in striking contrast to the Bohigas–Giannoni–Schmit conjecture, where chaotic behavior typically emerges at high energy. For two bosons, the odd-parity sector remains integrable, whereas the even-parity sector displays clear signatures of chaos at low energy and a crossover back to quasi-integrable behavior at higher energies. For three bosons, both parity sectors exhibit spectral statistics close to chaos at low energy. We argue that this unconventional form of few-body quantum chaos originates from diffractive processes induced by the impurity.