CHAOTIC LIGHT-SCATTERING FROM A SYSTEM OF OSCULATING, CONDUCTING SPHERES

Feedback in the equations describing the scattering coefficients cause chaotic behavior in the scattering intensities from a system composed of a pair of osculating spheres. Unlike other systems which display c haos as a trajectory in phase space, this system exhibits chaotic beha vior in a partial summation. As the region of osculation increases, te ll-tale signs of chaos emerge, and the Lyapunov exponent, a measure of the system's mean rate of exponential error growth, is shown to be gr eater than zero in these chaotic regions. We show bifurcation diagrams which depict regions of transformation from stability to chaos, inclu ding periodic windows and super-cycles.