Transport in Poygonal Billiard Systems

Abstract

The aim of this work is to explore the connections between chaos and diffusion by examining the properties of particle motion in non-chaotic systems. To this end, particle transport and diffusion are studied for point particles moving in systems with fixed polygonal scatterers of four types: (i) a periodic lattice containing many-sided polygonal scatterers; (ii) a periodic lattice containing few-sided polygonal scatterers; (iii) a periodic lattice containing randomly oriented polygonal scatterers; and (iv) a periodic lattice containing polygonal scatterers with irrational angles. The motion of a point particle in each of these system is non-chaotic, with Lyapunov exponents strictly equal to zero.