title: Escape of trajectories from a vase-shaped cavity.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia 23187-8795, USA. pch@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hansen
authors.forename: Kevin A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Mitchell
authors.forename: John B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Delos