201 research outputs found
Quantum mechanical analysis of the equilateral triangle billiard: periodic orbit theory and wave packet revivals
Using the fact that the energy eigenstates of the equilateral triangle
infinite well (or billiard) are available in closed form, we examine the
connections between the energy eigenvalue spectrum and the classical closed
paths in this geometry, using both periodic orbit theory and the short-term
semi-classical behavior of wave packets. We also discuss wave packet revivals
and show that there are exact revivals, for all wave packets, at times given by
where and are the length of one side
and the mass of the point particle respectively. We find additional cases of
exact revivals with shorter revival times for zero-momentum wave packets
initially located at special symmetry points inside the billiard. Finally, we
discuss simple variations on the equilateral
() triangle, such as the half equilateral
() triangle and other `foldings', which have
related energy spectra and revival structures.Comment: 34 pages, 9 embedded .eps figure
Structure and evolution of strange attractors in non-elastic triangular billiards
We study pinball billiard dynamics in an equilateral triangular table. In
such dynamics, collisions with the walls are non-elastic: the outgoing angle
with the normal vector to the boundary is a uniform factor
smaller than the incoming angle. This leads to contraction in phase space for
the discrete-time dynamics between consecutive collisions, and hence to
attractors of zero Lebesgue measure, which are almost always fractal strange
attractors with chaotic dynamics, due to the presence of an expansion
mechanism. We study the structure of these strange attractors and their
evolution as the contraction parameter is varied. For in
the interval (0, 1/3), we prove rigorously that the attractor has the structure
of a Cantor set times an interval, whereas for larger values of the
billiard dynamics gives rise to nonaccessible regions in phase space. For
close to 1, the attractor splits into three transitive components,
the basins of attraction of which have fractal basin boundaries.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures; submitted for publication. One video file
available at http://sistemas.fciencias.unam.mx/~dsanders
Nodal domains of the equilateral triangle billiard
We characterise the eigenfunctions of an equilateral triangle billiard in
terms of its nodal domains. The number of nodal domains has a quadratic form in
terms of the quantum numbers, with a non-trivial number-theoretic factor. The
patterns of the eigenfunctions follow a group-theoretic connection in a way
that makes them predictable as one goes from one state to another. Extensive
numerical investigations bring out the distribution functions of the mode
number and signed areas. The statistics of the boundary intersections is also
treated analytically. Finally, the distribution functions of the nodal loop
count and the nodal counting function are shown to contain information about
the classical periodic orbits using the semiclassical trace formula. We believe
that the results belong generically to non-separable systems, thus extending
the previous works which are concentrated on separable and chaotic systems.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figure
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