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Observation of islands of stability in soft wall atom-optics billiards
A Kaplan1, N Friedman, M Andersen
1Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
Physical Review Letters
|January 22, 2002
Abstract:
We report on numerical and experimental observations of islands of stability induced in a Bunimovich stadium atom-optics billiard by a soft wall repulsive potential. A deviation from exponential decay of the survival probability of atoms in an open billiard is observed, and explained by the presence of these stable islands and a sticky region surrounding them. We also investigate islands in dispersing billiards with soft walls, and predict a new mechanism for their formation.