Experimental investigation of the elastic enhancement factor in a transient region between regular and chaotic dynamics.

Abstract

We present the results of an experimental study of the elastic enhancement factor W for a microwave rectangular cavity simulating a two-dimensional quantum billiard in a transient region between regular and chaotic dynamics. The cavity was coupled to a vector network analyzer via two microwave antennas. The departure of the system from an integrable one due to the presence of antennas acting as scatterers is characterized by the parameter of chaoticity κ=2.8. The experimental results for the rectangular cavity are compared with those obtained for a microwave rough cavity simulating a chaotic quantum billiard. The experimental results were obtained for the frequency range ν=16-18.5 GHz and moderate absorption strength γ=5.2-7.4. We show that the elastic enhancement factor for the rectangular cavity lies below the theoretical value W=3 predicted for integrable systems, and it is significantly higher than that obtained for the rough cavity. The results obtained for the microwave rough cavity are smaller than those obtained within the framework of random matrix theory, and they lie between them and those predicted within a recently introduced model of the two-channel coupling [V. V. Sokolov and O. V. Zhirov, arXiv:1411.6211 [nucl-th]].