Nonuniversality in the spectral properties of time-reversal-invariant microwave networks and quantum graphs

We present experimental and numerical results for the long-range fluctuation properties in the spectra of quantum graphs with chaotic classical dynamics and preserved time-reversal invariance. Such systems are generally believed to provide an ideal basis for the experimental study of problems originating from the field of quantum chaos and random matrix theory. Our objective is to demonstrate that this is true only for short-range fluctuation properties in the spectra, whereas the observation of deviations in the long-range fluctuations is typical for quantum graphs. This may be attributed to the unavoidable occurrence of short periodic orbits, which explore only the individual bonds forming a graph and thus do not sense the chaoticity of its dynamics. In order to corroborate our supposition, we performed numerous experimental and corresponding numerical studies of long-range fluctuations in terms of the number variance and the power spectrum. Furthermore, we evaluated length spectra and compared them to semiclassical ones obtained from the exact trace formula for quantum graphs.