Signatures of Dynamical Tunneling in the Wave function of a Soft-Walled Open Microwave Billiard

Evidence for dynamical tunneling is observed in studies of the transmission, and wave functions, of a soft-walled microwave cavity resonator. In contrast to previous work, we identify the conditions for dynamical tunneling by monitoring the evolution of the wave function phase as a function of energy, which allows us to detect the tunneling process even under conditions where its expected level splitting remains irresolvable.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Tunneling Mechanism due to Chaos in a Complex Phase Space

We have revealed that the barrier-tunneling process in non-integrable systems is strongly linked to chaos in complex phase space by investigating a simple scattering map model. The semiclassical wavefunction reproduces complicated features of tunneling perfectly and it enables us to solve all the reasons why those features appear in spite of absence of chaos on the real plane. Multi-generation structure of manifolds, which is the manifestation of complex-domain homoclinic entanglement created by complexified classical dynamics, allows a symbolic coding and it is used as a guiding principle to extract dominant complex trajectories from all the semiclassical candidates.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 6 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Semiclassical Description of Tunneling in Mixed Systems: The Case of the Annular Billiard

We study quantum-mechanical tunneling between symmetry-related pairs of regular phase space regions that are separated by a chaotic layer. We consider the annular billiard, and use scattering theory to relate the splitting of quasi-degenerate states quantized on the two regular regions to specific paths connecting them. The tunneling amplitudes involved are given a semiclassical interpretation by extending the billiard boundaries to complex space and generalizing specular reflection to complex rays. We give analytical expressions for the splittings, and show that the dominant contributions come from {\em chaos-assisted}\/ paths that tunnel into and out of the chaotic layer.Comment: 4 pages, uuencoded postscript file, replaces a corrupted versio

Statistical analysis of scars in stadium billiard

In this paper, by using our improved plane wave decomposition method, we study the scars in the eigenfunctions of the stadium billiard from very low state to as high as about the one millionth state. In the systematic searching for scars of various types, we have used the approximate criterion based on the quantization of the classical action along the unstable periodic orbit supporting the scar. We have analized the profile of the integrated probability density along the orbit. We found that the maximal integrated intensity of different types of scars scales in different way with the $\hbar$, which confirms qualitatively and quantitatively the existing theories of scars such as that of Bogomolny (1988) and that of Robnik (1989).Comment: 22 plain Latex pages, 14 EPS figures (Figs. 4-6, 9,10,12 are included, others (too large) are availabe upon request.) to appear in J. Phys. A: Math. & Gen. 31 (1998

Fresnel filtering in lasing emission from scarred modes of wave-chaotic optical resonators

We study lasing emission from asymmetric resonant cavity (ARC) GaN micro-lasers. By comparing far-field intensity patterns with images of the micro-laser we find that the lasing modes are concentrated on three-bounce unstable periodic ray orbits, i.e. the modes are scarred. The high-intensity emission directions of these scarred modes are completely different from those predicted by applying Snell's law to the ray orbit. This effect is due to the process of ``Fresnel filtering'' which occurs when a beam of finite angular spread is incident at the critical angle for total internal reflection.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures (eps), RevTeX 3.1, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett; corrected a minor (transcription) erro

Resonance-assisted tunneling in near-integrable systems

Dynamical tunneling between symmetry related invariant tori is studied in the near-integrable regime. Using the kicked Harper model as an illustration, we show that the exponential decay of the wave functions in the classically forbidden region is modified due to coupling processes that are mediated by classical resonances. This mechanism leads to a substantial deviation of the splitting between quasi-degenerate eigenvalues from the purely exponential decrease with 1 / hbar obtained for the integrable system. A simple semiclassical framework, which takes into account the effect of the resonance substructure on the KAM tori, allows to quantitatively reproduce the behavior of the eigenvalue splittings.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, gzipped tar file, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett, text slightly condensed compared to first versio

An efficient Fredholm method for calculation of highly excited states of billiards

A numerically efficient Fredholm formulation of the billiard problem is presented. The standard solution in the framework of the boundary integral method in terms of a search for roots of a secular determinant is reviewed first. We next reformulate the singularity condition in terms of a flow in the space of an auxiliary one-parameter family of eigenproblems and argue that the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions are analytic functions within a certain domain. Based on this analytic behavior we present a numerical algorithm to compute a range of billiard eigenvalues and associated eigenvectors by only two diagonalizations.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures; included systematic study of accuracy with 2 new figures, movie to Fig. 4, http://www.quantumchaos.de/Media/0703030media.av

Localization of Eigenfunctions in the Stadium Billiard

We present a systematic survey of scarring and symmetry effects in the stadium billiard. The localization of individual eigenfunctions in Husimi phase space is studied first, and it is demonstrated that on average there is more localization than can be accounted for on the basis of random-matrix theory, even after removal of bouncing-ball states and visible scars. A major point of the paper is that symmetry considerations, including parity and time-reversal symmetries, enter to influence the total amount of localization. The properties of the local density of states spectrum are also investigated, as a function of phase space location. Aside from the bouncing-ball region of phase space, excess localization of the spectrum is found on short periodic orbits and along certain symmetry-related lines; the origin of all these sources of localization is discussed quantitatively and comparison is made with analytical predictions. Scarring is observed to be present in all the energy ranges considered. In light of these results the excess localization in individual eigenstates is interpreted as being primarily due to symmetry effects; another source of excess localization, scarring by multiple unstable periodic orbits, is smaller by a factor of $\sqrt{\hbar}$.Comment: 31 pages, including 10 figure

Dynamical Tunneling in Mixed Systems

We study quantum-mechanical tunneling in mixed dynamical systems between symmetry-related phase space tori separated by a chaotic layer. Considering e.g. the annular billiard we decompose tunneling-related energy splittings and shifts into sums over paths in phase space. We show that tunneling transport is dominated by chaos-assisted paths that tunnel into and out of the chaotic layer via the ``beach'' regions sandwiched between the regular islands and the chaotic sea. Level splittings are shown to fluctuate on two scales as functions of energy or an external parameter: they display a dense sequence of peaks due to resonances with states supported by the chaotic sea, overlaid on top of slow modulations arising from resonances with states supported by the ``beaches''. We obtain analytic expressions which enable us to assess the relative importance of tunneling amplitudes into the chaotic sea vs. its internal transport properties. Finally, we average over the statistics of the chaotic region, and derive the asymptotic tail of the splitting distribution function under rather general assumptions concerning the fluctuation properties of chaotic states.Comment: 28 pages, Latex, 16 EPS figure

A realistic example of chaotic tunneling: The hydrogen atom in parallel static electric and magnetic fields

Statistics of tunneling rates in the presence of chaotic classical dynamics is discussed on a realistic example: a hydrogen atom placed in parallel uniform static electric and magnetic fields, where tunneling is followed by ionization along the fields direction. Depending on the magnetic quantum number, one may observe either a standard Porter-Thomas distribution of tunneling rates or, for strong scarring by a periodic orbit parallel to the external fields, strong deviations from it. For the latter case, a simple model based on random matrix theory gives the correct distribution.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev.