Multiple Reflections for Classical Particles Moving under the Influence of a Time-Dependent Potential Well.

We study the dynamics of classical particles confined in a time-dependent potential well. The dynamics of each particle is described by a two-dimensional nonlinear discrete mapping for the variables energy en and phase ϕn of the periodic moving well. We obtain the phase space and show that it contains periodic islands, chaotic sea, and invariant spanning curves. We find the elliptic and hyperbolic fixed points and discuss a numerical method to obtain them. We study the dispersion of the initial conditions after a single iteration. This study allows finding regions where multiple reflections occur. Multiple reflections happen when a particle does not have enough energy to exit the potential well and is trapped inside it, suffering several reflections until it has enough energy to exit. We also show deformations in regions with multiple reflection, but the area remains constant when we change the control parameter NC. Finally, we show some structures that appear in the e0e1 plane by using density plots.

Dynamics of a light beam suffering the influence of a dispersing mechanism with tunable refraction index.

The dynamics of a monochromatic light beam is studied inside the oval billiard with an inner scatter circle, which can be interpreted as a cross section of a long optical fiber. The outer oval boundary acts as a perfect reflector for the light beam while the scatter circle encloses a medium with changeable refraction index. The light beam refracts when it enters inside this circle and some drastic changes in the phase space are observed. The increase of the refractive index destroys the center of stability in the phase space leading to a spread of scattered light and the islands of traps for the light propagation become more pulverized. Numerical results are presented and discussed.

Dynamics of classical particles in oval or elliptic billiards with a dispersing mechanism.

Some dynamical properties for an oval billiard with a scatterer in its interior are studied. The dynamics consists of a classical particle colliding between an inner circle and an external boundary given by an oval, elliptical, or circle shapes, exploring for the first time some natural generalizations. The billiard is indeed a generalization of the annular billiard, which is of strong interest for understanding marginally unstable periodic orbits and their role in the boundary between regular and chaotic regions in both classical and quantum (including experimental) systems. For the oval billiard, which has a mixed phase space, the presence of an obstacle is an interesting addition. We demonstrate, with details, how to obtain the equations of the mapping, and the changes in the phase space are discussed. We study the linear stability of some fixed points and show both analytically and numerically the occurrence of direct and inverse parabolic bifurcations. Lyapunov exponents and generalized bifurcation diagrams are obtained. Moreover, histograms of the number of successive iterations for orbits that stay in a cusp are studied. These histograms are shown to be scaling invariant when changing the radius of the scatterer, and they have a power law slope around -3. The results here can be generalized to other kinds of external boundaries.

Escape of particles in a time-dependent potential well.

We investigate the escape of an ensemble of noninteracting particles inside an infinite potential box that contains a time-dependent potential well. The dynamics of each particle is described by a two-dimensional nonlinear area-preserving mapping for the variables energy and time, leading to a mixed phase space. The chaotic sea in the phase space surrounds periodic islands and is limited by a set of invariant spanning curves. When a hole is introduced in the energy axis, the histogram of frequency for the escape of particles, which we observe to be scaling invariant, grows rapidly until it reaches a maximum and then decreases toward zero at sufficiently long times. A plot of the survival probability of a particle in the dynamics as function of time is observed to be exponential for short times, reaching a crossover time and turning to a slower-decay regime, due to sticky regions observed in the phase space.