Diffusive energy growth in classical and quantum driven oscillators

We study the long-time stability of oscillators driven by time-dependent forces originating from dynamical systems with varying degrees of randomness. The asymptotic energy growth is related to ergodic properties of the dynamical system: when the autocorrelation of the force decays sufficiently fast one typically obtains linear diffusive growth of the energy. For a system with good mixing properties we obtain a stronger result in the form of a central limit theorem. If the autocorrelation decays slowly or does not decay, the behavior can depend on subtle properties of the particular model. We study this dependence in detail for a family of quasiperiodic forces. The solution involves the analysis of a small-denominator problem that can be treated by fairly elementary methods. In the special case of a periodic force the quantum stability problem can be expressed in terms of spectral properties of the Floquet operator. In the presence of resonances the spectrum is absolutely continuous. We find explicitly the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions for the nonresonant case.