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First experimental evidence for chaos-assisted tunneling in a microwave annular billiard
1Institut fur Kernphysik, Technische Universitat Darmstadt, D-64289 Darmstadt, Germany.
Abstract:
We report on first experimental signatures for chaos-assisted tunneling in a two-dimensional annular billiard. Measurements of microwave spectra from a superconducting cavity with high frequency resolution are combined with electromagnetic field distributions experimentally determined from a normal conducting twin cavity with high spatial resolution to resolve eigenmodes with properly identified quantum numbers. Distributions of quasidoublet splittings serve as basic observables for the tunneling between whispering gallery-type modes localized to congruent, but distinct tori which are coupled weakly to irregular eigenstates associated with the chaotic region in phase space.
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