Open Billiards Research Articles

Differentiability of the Largest Lyapunov Exponent for Non-Planar Open Billiards

This paper investigates the behaviour of open billiard systems in high-dimensional spaces. Specifically, we estimate the largest Lyapunov exponent, which quantifies the rate of divergence between nearby trajectories in a dynamical system. This exponent is shown to be continuous and differentiable with respect to a small perturbation parameter. A theoretical analysis forms the basis of the investigation. Our findings contribute to the field of dynamical systems theory and have significant implications for the stability of open billiard systems, which are used to model physical phenomena. The results provide a deeper comprehension of the behaviour of open billiard systems in high-dimensional spaces and emphasise the importance of taking small perturbations into consideration when analysing these systems.

On infinitely many foliations by caustics in strictly convex open billiards

AbstractReflection in a strictly convex bounded planar billiard acts on the space of oriented lines and preserves a standard area form. A caustic is a curve C whose tangent lines are reflected by the billiard to lines tangent to C. The famous Birkhoff conjecture states that the only strictly convex billiards with a foliation by closed caustics near the boundary are ellipses. By Lazutkin’s theorem, there always exists a Cantor family of closed caustics approaching the boundary. In the present paper, we deal with an open billiard, whose boundary is a strictly convex embedded (non-closed) curve $\gamma $ . We prove that there exists a domain U adjacent to $\gamma $ from the convex side and a $C^\infty $ -smooth foliation of $U\cup \gamma $ whose leaves are $\gamma $ and (non-closed) caustics of the billiard. This generalizes a previous result by Melrose on the existence of a germ of foliation as above. We show that there exists a continuum of above foliations by caustics whose germs at each point in $\gamma $ are pairwise different. We prove a more general version of this statement for $\gamma $ being an (immersed) arc. It also applies to a billiard bounded by a closed strictly convex curve $\gamma $ and yields infinitely many ‘immersed’ foliations by immersed caustics. For the proof of the above results, we state and prove their analogue for a special class of area-preserving maps generalizing billiard reflections: the so-called $C^{\infty }$ -lifted strongly billiard-like maps. We also prove a series of results on conjugacy of billiard maps near the boundary for open curves of the above type.

Differentiability of the largest Lyapunov exponent for planar open billiards

In this paper, we estimate the largest Lyapunov exponent for open billiards in the plane. We show that the largest Lyapunov exponent is differentiable with respect to a billiard deformation.

Projective Cones for Sequential Dispersing Billiards

We construct Birkhoff cones for dispersing billiards, which are contracted by the action of the transfer operator. This construction permits the study of statistical properties not only of regular dispersing billiards but also of sequential billiards (the billiard changes at each collision in a prescribed manner), open billiards (the dynamics exits some region or dies when hitting some obstacle) and many other examples. In particular, we include applications to chaotic scattering and the random Lorentz gas.

Ray-Wave Correspondence in Microstar Cavities.

In a previous work by the authors (Phys. Rev. Research 2, 012072(R) (2020)) a novel concept of light confinement in a microcavity was introduced which is based on successive perfect transmissions at Brewster's angle. Hence, a new class of open billiards was designed with star-shaped microcavities where rays propagate on orbits that leave and re-enter the cavity. In this article, we investigate the ray-wave correspondence in microstar cavities. An unintuitive difference between clockwise and counterclockwise propagation is revealed which is traced back to nonlinear resonance chains in phase space.

The open unsymmetrical stadium billiard

In open billiards a particle can escape from the cavity through a leak. This type of systems have received special attention because of their applications to a wide variety of physical phenomena ranging from hydrodynamics to quantum chaos and astronomy. Chaotic leaked billiards are characterized by a so called transient behavior, i.e. by the presence of chaotic motion with a finite life time impossible to be studied just through the analysis of its asymptotic behavior. Under this scenario, we consider the quarter stadium billiard to study the influence of leaking marginal unstable periodic orbits. A rigorous statistical analysis of the survival probability is presented, setting up the classical trajectories’ solution in such a way that the system only depends on its partial separability and construct the Birkhoff map. The possibility of more than one leak into a billiard is also considered

Experimental investigation of the fluctuations in nonchaotic scattering in microwave billiards**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11775100, 11775101, and 11961131009).

We report on the experimental investigation of the properties of the eigenvalues and wavefunctions and the fluctuation properties of the scattering matrix of closed and open billiards, respectively, of which the classical dynamics undergoes a transition from integrable via almost integrable to fully chaotic. To realize such a system, we chose a billiard with a 60° sector shape of which the classical dynamics is integrable, and introduced circular scatterers of varying number, size, and position. The spectral properties of generic quantum systems of which the classical counterpart is either integrable or chaotic are universal and well understood. If, however, the classical dynamics is pseudo-integrable or almost-integrable, they exhibit a non-universal intermediate statistics, for which analytical results are known only in a few cases, e.g., if it corresponds to semi-Poisson statistics. Since the latter is, above all, clearly distinguishable from those of integrable and chaotic systems, our aim was to design a billiard with these features which indeed is achievable by adding just one scatterer of appropriate size and position to the sector billiard. We demonstrated that, while the spectral properties of almost-integrable billiards are sensitive to the classical dynamics, this is not the case for the distribution of the wavefunction components, which was analyzed in terms of the strength distribution, and the fluctuation properties of the scattering matrix which coincide with those of typical, fully chaotic systems.

Two-dimensional quantum scattering by non-isotropic interactions localized on a circle, applications to open billiards

Two-dimensional quantum scattering by isotropic and non-isotropic interactions localized on a circle is considered. The expansion of the interaction on the circle in a Fourier series allows us to express basic objects of scattering theory (resolvent, T operator, differential cross length, cross length, and cross length averaged over all orientations of the incident particle), in terms of operations on matrices. For numerical applications, these matrices are truncated to a given order. If the interaction is isotropic, this general formulation reduces to the usual one, and the resonances in the isotropic cases are studied because they allow us to interpret resonances in some non-isotropic cases. Applications to open circular billiards are given. A first approach to the open quantum circular billiard is an interaction equal to zero on some parts of the circle and to a great value λ on the other parts. Then, it turns out that the limit λ → +∞ does not lead to an explicit result in this approach. A second approach to the open circular billiard is given by replacing apertures (where the interaction is zero) by pseudo-apertures (where the interaction is small but non-zero), and the limit λ → +∞ then leads to an explicit result. In the high energy regime, the two approaches give similar results and allow interpretation of numerous results, in particular, for differential cross lengths, in terms of classical mechanics.

Shannon entropy and avoided crossings in closed and open quantum billiards.

The relation between Shannon entropy and avoided crossings is investigated in dielectric microcavities. The Shannon entropy of the probability density for eigenfunctions in an open elliptic billiard as well as a closed quadrupole billiard increases as the center of the avoided crossing is approached. These results are opposite to those of atomic physics for electrons. It is found that the collective Lamb shift of the open quantum system and the symmetry breaking in the closed chaotic quantum system have equivalent effects on the Shannon entropy.

Thin structure of the transit time distributions of open billiards.

It is known that typical open billiards distribution of transit times is an exponentially decaying function, possibly with a power-law tail. In the paper we show that on small scales some of such distributions change their appearance. These distributions contain a quasiperiodic thin structure, which carries a significant amount of information about the system. Origin and properties of this structure are discussed.

On general rotation sets of open billiards

We study the general rotation sets of open billiards in $${\mathbb {R}}^2$$ for the observable given by the starting point of a given billiard trajectory. We prove that, for a class of open billiards, the general rotation set is equal to the polygon formed by the midpoints of the segments connecting the centers of the obstacles. Moreover, we provide an example to show that such a result may not hold in general.

Entanglement distribution statistic in Andreev billiards

We investigate statistical aspects of the entanglement production for open chaotic mesoscopic billiards in contact with superconducting parts, known as Andreev billiards. The complete distributions of concurrence and entanglement of formation are obtained by using the Altland–Zirnbauer symmetry classes of circular ensembles of scattering matrices, which complements previous studies in chaotic universal billiards belonging to other classes of random matrix theory. Our results show a unique and very peculiar behavior: the realization of entanglement in a Andreev billiard always results in non-separable state, regardless of the time reversal symmetry. The analytical calculations are supported by a numerical Monte Carlo simulation.

Accidental bound states in the continuum in an open Sinai billiard

The fundamental mechanism of the bound states in the continuum is the full destructive interference of two resonances when two eigenlevels of the closed system are crossing. There is, however, a wide class of quantum chaotic systems which display only avoided crossings of eigenlevels. As an example of such a system we consider the Sinai billiard coupled with two semi-infinite waveguides. We show that notwithstanding the absence of degeneracy bound states in the continuum occur due to accidental decoupling of the eigenstates of the billiard from the waveguides.

Rotating leaks in the stadium billiard.

The open stadium billiard has a survival probability, P(t), that depends on the rate of escape of particles through the leak. It is known that the decay of P(t) is exponential early in time while for long times the decay follows a power law. In this work, we investigate an open stadium billiard in which the leak is free to rotate around the boundary of the stadium at a constant velocity, ω. It is found that P(t) is very sensitive to ω. For certain ω values P(t) is purely exponential while for other values the power law behaviour at long times persists. We identify three ranges of ω values corresponding to three different responses of P(t). It is shown that these variations in P(t) are due to the interaction of the moving leak with Marginally Unstable Periodic Orbits (MUPOs).

Billiard with a handle.

We consider an open billiard with two holes, connected by a handle. The central billiard is chosen so that its closed form's islands of stability occupy a significant part of the phase space. Holes destroy these islands, which leads to almost all trajectories of the system being interleaved. We also study the unbalanced flow of billiard particles through the handle, which appears only after a small border site of nonspecular reflection is added to the system. With this site our system is rather a ratchet of a different type, since the site does not produce an explicitly acting force or violate the reversibility of trajectories.

Differentiability of Hausdorff dimension of the non-wandering set in a planar open billiard

We consider open billiards in the plane satisfying the no-eclipse condition. We show that the points in the non-wandering set depend differentiably on deformations to the boundary of the billiard. We use Bowen's equation to estimate the Hausdorff dimension of the non-wandering set of the billiard. Finally we show that the Hausdorff dimension depends differentiably on sufficiently smooth deformations to the boundary of the billiard, and estimate the derivative with respect to such deformations.

Cross-section fluctuations in open microwave billiards and quantum graphs: The counting-of-maxima method revisited.

The fluctuations exhibited by the cross sections generated in a compound-nucleus reaction or, more generally, in a quantum-chaotic scattering process, when varying the excitation energy or another external parameter, are characterized by the width Γcorr of the cross-section correlation function. Brink and Stephen [Phys. Lett. 5, 77 (1963)] proposed a method for its determination by simply counting the number of maxima featured by the cross sections as a function of the parameter under consideration. They stated that the product of the average number of maxima per unit energy range and Γcorr is constant in the Ercison region of strongly overlapping resonances. We use the analogy between the scattering formalism for compound-nucleus reactions and for microwave resonators to test this method experimentally with unprecedented accuracy using large data sets and propose an analytical description for the regions of isolated and overlapping resonances.

Survival probability for open spherical billiards.

We study the survival probability for long times in an open spherical billiard, extending previous work on the circular billiard. We provide details of calculations regarding two billiard configurations, specifically a sphere with a circular hole and a sphere with a square hole. The constant terms of the long-time survival probability expansions have been derived analytically. Terms that vanish in the long time limit are investigated analytically and numerically, leading to connections with the Riemann hypothesis.

Current control by resonance decoupling and magnetic focusing in soft-wall billiards.

The isolation of energetically persistent scattering pathways from the resonant manifold of an open electron billiard in the deep quantum regime is demonstrated. This enables efficient conductance switching at varying temperature and Fermi velocity, using a weak magnetic field. The effect relies on the interplay between magnetic focusing and soft-wall confinement, which rescale the scattering pathways and decouple quasibound states from the attached leads, the field-free motion being forwardly collimated. The mechanism proves robust against billiard shape variations and qualifies as a nanoelectronic current control element.

Infinite horseshoes and complex dynamics in physical systems

Horseshoe maps have played an important role in the study of nonlinear dynamical systems. Here we study maps associated to two simple physical systems: a four-hill potential and an open billiard. They turn out to be very different from the standard horseshoe maps: one iteration stretches and folds a square in phase space an infinite number of times before placing it across itself. In this paper we explore in further depth these infinite horseshoe maps. We show that the infinite folding action requires that the maps are not defined in part of the rectangle. Our exploration also shows that infinite horseshoes provide valuable information on the complexity of the system. In particular, they provide a visual way to code the wide variety of complex orbits existing in the dynamical systems considered.