S. Bauch et al., SIGNATURE OF NON-NEWTONIAN ORBITS IN RAY-SPLITTING CAVITIES, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics, 57(1), 1998, pp. 304-315
Ray splitting is a universal phenomenon that occurs in all wave system
s with sharp interfaces. A key consequence of ray splitting is the occ
urrence of non-Newtonian periodic orbits whose presence can he reveale
d in the oscillating part of the density of states. We use thin dielec
tric-and metal-loaded microwave cavities to identify experimentally th
e signature of non-Newtonian periodic orbits caused by ray splitting a
t sharp interfaces and corroborate all our experimental results with d
etailed numerical computations and semiclassical theory. For two-dimen
sional ray-splitting problems the electromagnetic Helmholtz and quanta
l Schrodinger equations are equivalent. Thus our results are directly
relevant to quantum chaos studies.