Entanglement and Dynamics of Spin Chains in Periodically Pulsed Magnetic Fields: Accelerator Modes

We study the dynamics of a single excitation in a Heisenberg spin-chain subjected to a sequence of periodic pulses from an external, parabolic, magnetic field. We show that, for experimentally reasonable parameters, a pair of counterpropagating coherent states is ejected from the center of the chain. We find an illuminating correspondence with the quantum time evolution of the well-known paradigm of quantum chaos, the quantum kicked rotor. From this we can analyze the entanglement production and interpret the ejected coherent states as a manifestation of the so-called "accelerator modes" of a classically chaotic system.