We examine the interplay of nonlinearity of a dynamical system and thermal fluctuation of its environment in the “physical limit” of small damping and slow diffusion in a semiclassical context and show that the trajectories of c-number variables exhibit dynamical chaos due to the thermal fluctuations of the bath.

• Received 3 February 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.62.4409