Document Type

Article

Department/Program

Physics

Journal Title

Physical Review E

Pub Date

6-2006

Publisher

American Physical Society

Volume

73

Issue

6

Abstract

We consider the escape of ballistic trajectories from an open, vase-shaped cavity. Such a system serves as a model for microwaves escaping from a cavity or electrons escaping from a microjunction. Fixing the initial position of a particle and recording its escape time as a function of the initial launch direction, the resulting escape-time plot shows “epistrophic fractal” structure—repeated structure within structure at all levels of resolution with new features appearing in the fractal at longer time scales. By launching trajectories simultaneously in all directions (modeling an outgoing wave), a detector placed outside the cavity would measure a train of escaping pulses. We connect the structure of this chaotic pulse train with the fractal structure of the escape-time plot.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.73.066226

Included in

Physics Commons

Share

COinS