title: Observation of islands of stability in soft wall atom-optics billiards.
abstract: We report on numerical and experimental observations of islands of stability induced in a Bunimovich stadium atom-optics billiard by a soft wall repulsive potential. A deviation from exponential decay of the survival probability of atoms in an open billiard is observed, and explained by the presence of these stable islands and a sticky region surrounding them. We also investigate islands in dispersing billiards with soft walls, and predict a new mechanism for their formation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kaplan
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Friedman
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Andersen
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Davidson