We study the statistics of the Wigner delay time and resonance width for a Bloch particle in ac and dc fields in the regime of quantum chaos. It is shown that after appropriate rescaling the distributions of these quantities have universal character predicted by the random matrix theory of chaotic scattering.

The statistics of the resonance widths and the behavior of the survival probability is studied in a particular model of quantum chaotic scattering (a particle in a periodic potential subject to static and time-periodic forces) introduced earlier in Ref. [5,6]. The coarse-grained distribution of the resonance widths is shown to be in good agreement with the prediction of Random Matrix Theory (RMT). The behavior of the survival probability shows, however, some deviation from RMT.

In this work, we discuss the resonance states of a quantum particle in a periodic potential plus static force. Originally this problem was formulated for a crystalline electron subject to the static electric field and is known nowadays as the Wannier-Stark problem. We describe a novel approach to the Wannier-Stark problem developed in recent years. This approach allows to compute the complex energy spectrum of a Wannier-Stark system as the poles of a rigorously constructed scattering matrix and, in this sense, solves the Wannier-Stark problem without any approximation. The suggested method is very efficient from the numerical point of view and has proven to be a powerful analytic tool for Wannier-Stark resonances appearing in different physical systems like optical or semiconductor superlattices.