Extreme value statistics of random complex waves and chaotic eigenstates

Complex random states have the statistical properties of the Gaussian and Circular Unitary Ensemble eigenstates of random matrix theory. Even though their components are correlated by the normalization constraint, it is nevertheless possible to derive compact analytic formulae for their extreme values’ statistical properties for all dimensionalities. The maximum intensity result slowly approaches the Gumbel distribution even though the variables are bounded, whereas the minimum intensity result rapidly approaches the Weibull distribution. Since random matrix theory is conjectured to be applicable to chaotic quantum systems, we calculate the extreme eigenfunction statistics for the standard map with parameters at which its classical map is fully chaotic. The statistical behaviors are consistent with the finite-N formulae.