TIME-REVERSED IMAGING AS A DIAGNOSTIC OF WAVE AND PARTICLE CHAOS

In the presence of multiple scattering, waves and particles behave fun damentally differently, As a model for the stability of the temporal e volution of particle and wave propagation, a scattering system is pres ented in which particle propagation is strongly unstable while wave pr opagation is significantly more stable. Both analytical and numerical evidence for the different stability properties of wave and particle p ropagation is presented; the exponential divergence of particle trajec tories leads to a critical length scale for the stability of particle propagation that depends exponentially on time [exp(-mu t)], whereas t he critical length scale for the stability of wave propagation decreas es with time only as 1/root t. This fundamental difference is due to w ave suppression of classical chaos that is intimately related to the c oncept of ray splitting. [S1063-651X(98)04611-X].