Semiclassical Approach to Long Time Propagation in Quantum Chaos: Predicting Scars

We present two powerful semiclassical formulas for quantum systems with classically chaotic dynamics, one of them being the Fourier transform of the other. The first formula evaluates the autocorrelation function of a state constructed in the neighborhood of a short periodic orbit, where the propagation for times greater than the Ehrenfest time is computed through the contribution of homoclinic orbits. The second formula evaluates the square of the overlap of the proposed state with the eigenstates of the system, providing valuable information about the scarring phenomenon. Both expressions are successfully verified in the Bunimovich stadium billiard.