Delay times and reflection in chaotic cavities with absorption.

Abstract

Absorption yields an additional exponential decay in open quantum systems which can be described by shifting the (scattering) energy E along the imaginary axis, E+i variant Planck's over 2pi /2tau(a). Using the random-matrix approach, we calculate analytically the distribution of proper delay times (eigenvalues of the time-delay matrix) in chaotic systems with broken time-reversal symmetry that is valid for an arbitrary number of generally nonequivalent channels and an arbitrary absorption rate tau(-1)(a). The relation between the average delay time and the "norm-leakage" decay function is found. Fluctuations above the average at large values of delay times are strongly suppressed by absorption. The relation of the time-delay matrix to the reflection matrix S dagger S is established at arbitrary absorption that gives us the distribution of reflection eigenvalues. The particular case of single-channel scattering is explicitly considered in detail.