Experimental investigation of the elastic enhancement factor in a transient region between regular and chaotic dynamics

We present the results of an experimental study of the elastic enhancement factor W for a microwave rectangular cavity simulating a two-dimensional quantum billiard in a transient region between regular and chaotic dynamics. The cavity was coupled to a vector network analyzer via two microwave antennas. The departure of the system from the integrable one due to presence of antennas acting as scatterers is characterised by the parameter of chaoticity k = 2.8. The experimental results for the rectangular cavity are compared with the ones obtained for a microwave rough cavity simulating a chaotic quantum billiard. The experimental results were obtained for the frequency range v = 16 - 18.5 GHz and moderate absorption strength y = 5.2 - 7.4. We show that the elastic enhancement factor for the rectangular cavity lies below the theoretical value W = 3 predicted for integrable systems and it is significantly higher than the one obtained for the rough cavity. The results obtained for the microwave rough cavity are smaller than the ones obtained within the framework of Random Matrix Theory and lie between them and the ones predicted within a recently introduced model of the two-channel coupling (V. Sokolov and O. Zhirov, arXiv:1411.6211v2[nucl-th], 12 Dec 2014).

Are Scattering Properties of Graphs Uniquely Connected to Their Shapes?

The famous question of Mark Kac Can one hear the shape of a drum? addressing the unique connection between the shape of a planar region and the spectrum of the corresponding Laplace operator can be legitimately extended to scattering systems. In the modified version one asks whether the geometry of a vibrating system can be determined by scattering experiments. We present the first experimental approach to this problem in the case of microwave graphs (networks) simulating quantum graphs. Our experimental results strongly indicate a negative answer. To demonstrate this we consider scattering from a pair of isospectral microwave networks consisting of vertices connected by microwave coaxial cables and extended to scattering systems by connecting leads to infinity to form isoscattering networks. We show that the amplitudes and phases of the determinants of the scattering matrices of such networks are the same within the experimental uncertainties. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the scattering matrices of the networks are conjugated by the, so called, transplantation relation.