Achim Richter
Institute for Nuclear Physics, Darmstadt University of Technology
Playing Billiards with Microwaves - Quantum Manifestations of Classical Chaos


Flat microwave resonators shaped in the form of billiards are particularly well suited to study the quantum mechanical behavior of classically chaotic systems because of the formal equivalence of the respective wave equations, i.e. the Helmholtz and the Schroedinger equation. With superconducting resonators of high quality factors it is possible to measure the spectrum of eigenmodes and their eigenfunctions completely and to determine their statistical properties. Two- and three-dimensional billiards systems of different chaoticity are discussed and it is shown that they display generic features which are also evident in real physical systems like atoms, molecules and nuclei.