Phase-space composition of driven elliptical billiards and its impact on Fermi acceleration

Abstract

We demonstrated very recently [Lenz, New J. Phys. 11, 083035 (2009)] that an ensemble of particles in the driven elliptical billiard shows a surprising crossover from subdiffusion to normal diffusion in momentum space. This crossover is not parameter induced, but rather occurs dynamically in the evolution of the ensemble. In this work, we consider three different driving modes of the elliptical billiard and perform a comprehensive analysis of the corresponding four-dimensional phase space. The composition of this phase space is different in the high-velocity regime compared to the low-velocity regime. We will show, among others, by investigating periodic orbits and probability distributions of laminar phases that the stickiness properties, which eventually determine the diffusion, are intimately connected with this change in the composition of the phase space with respect to velocity. In the course of the evolution, the accelerating ensemble thus explores regions of varying stickiness, leading to the mentioned crossover in the diffusion.