Computational Materials Science Center: PUBLICATIONS

Irregular Scattering of Particles Confined to Ring-Bounded Cavities

M. Lach-hab, E. Blaisten-Barojas, and T. Sauer
Institute for Computational Sciences and Informatics
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030

The motion of a free particle that scatters elastically from ring-bounded cavities is analyzed classically. When the ring is a smooth circle the scattering follows a regular and periodic pattern. However for rings composed by N scatterers the flow is irregular: of Lyapunov type when N<50 and of Bernouilli type when N>50. The escape time from these cavities follows a geometric distribution as a function of the aperture size.

J. of Statistical Physics, 87, 137 (1997)
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