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Article
Escape of Trajectories From a Vase-Shaped Cavity
Physical Review E
  • Paul Hansen, William & Mary
  • Kevin A. Mitchell
  • John B. Delos, William & Mary
Document Type
Article
Department/Program
Physics
Pub Date
6-1-2006
Publisher
American Physical Society
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
Disciplines
Citation Information
Paul Hansen, Kevin A. Mitchell and John B. Delos. "Escape of Trajectories From a Vase-Shaped Cavity" Physical Review E Vol. 73 Iss. 6 (2006)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/john-delos/45/