Escape through a time-dependent hole in the doubling map

Spherical billiards with almost complete escape

A dynamical billiard consists of a point particle moving uniformly except for mirror-like collisions with the boundary. Recent work has described the escape of the particle through a hole in the boundary of a circular or spherical billiard, making connections with the Riemann Hypothesis. Unlike the circular case, the sphere with a single hole leads to a non-zero probability of never escaping. Here, we study variants in which almost all initial conditions escape, with multiple small holes or a thin strip. We show that equal spacing of holes around the equator is an efficient means of ensuring almost complete escape and study the long time survival probability for small holes analytically and numerically. We find that it approaches a universal function of a single parameter, hole area multiplied by time.

Leaking of orbits from the phase space of the dissipative discontinuous standard mapping

We investigate the escape of particles from the phase space produced by a two-dimensional, nonlinear and discontinuous, area-contracting map. The mapping, given in action-angle variables, is parametrized by K and γ which control the strength of nonlinearity and dissipation, respectively. We focus on two dynamical regimes, K<1 and K≥1, known as slow and quasilinear diffusion regimes, respectively, for the area-preserving version of the map (i.e., when γ=0). When a hole of hight h is introduced in the action axis we find both the histogram of escape times P_{E}(n) and the survival probability P_{S}(n) of particles to be scale invariant, with the typical escape time n_{typ}=exp〈lnn〉; that is, both P_{E}(n/n_{typ}) and P_{S}(n/n_{typ}) define universal functions. Moreover, for γ≪1, we show that n_{typ} is proportional to h^{2}/D, where D is the diffusion coefficient of the corresponding area-preserving map that in turn is proportional to K^{5/2} and K^{2} in the slow and the quasilinear diffusion regimes, respectively.

Transition from normal to ballistic diffusion in a one-dimensional impact system

We characterize a transition from normal to ballistic diffusion in a bouncing ball dynamics. The system is composed of a particle, or an ensemble of noninteracting particles, experiencing elastic collisions with a heavy and periodically moving wall under the influence of a constant gravitational field. The dynamics lead to a mixed phase space where chaotic orbits have a free path to move along the velocity axis, presenting a normal diffusion behavior. Depending on the control parameter, one can observe the presence of featured resonances, known as accelerator modes, that lead to a ballistic growth of velocity. Through statistical and numerical analysis of the velocity of the particle, we are able to characterize a transition between the two regimes, where transport properties were used to characterize the scenario of the ballistic regime. Also, in an analysis of the probability of an orbit to reach an accelerator mode as a function of the velocity, we observe a competition between the normal and ballistic transport in the midrange velocity.

Escape dynamics through a continuously growing leak

We formulate a model that describes the escape dynamics in a leaky chaotic system in which the size of the leak depends on the number of the in-falling particles. The basic motivation of this work is the astrophysical process, which describes the planetary accretion. In order to study the dynamics generally, the standard map is investigated in two cases when the dynamics is fully hyperbolic and in the presence of Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser islands. In addition to the numerical calculations, an analytic solution to the temporal behavior of the model is also derived. We show that in the early phase of the leak expansion, as long as there are enough particles in the system, the number of survivors deviates from the well-known exponential decay. Furthermore, the analytic solution returns the classical result in the limiting case when the number of particles does not affect the leak size.

On the statistical and transport properties of a non-dissipative Fermi-Ulam model

The transport and diffusion properties for the velocity of a Fermi-Ulam model were characterized using the decay rate of the survival probability. The system consists of an ensemble of non-interacting particles confined to move along and experience elastic collisions with two infinitely heavy walls. One is fixed, working as a returning mechanism of the colliding particles, while the other one moves periodically in time. The diffusion equation is solved, and the diffusion coefficient is numerically estimated by means of the averaged square velocity. Our results show remarkably good agreement of the theory and simulation for the chaotic sea below the first elliptic island in the phase space. From the decay rates of the survival probability, we obtained transport properties that can be extended to other nonlinear mappings, as well to billiard problems.

Temporal-varying failures of nodes in networks

We consider networks in which random walkers are removed because of the failure of specific nodes. We interpret the rate of loss as a measure of the importance of nodes, a notion we denote as failure centrality. We show that the degree of the node is not sufficient to determine this measure and that, in a first approximation, the shortest loops through the node have to be taken into account. We propose approximations of the failure centrality which are valid for temporal-varying failures, and we dwell on the possibility of externally changing the relative importance of nodes in a given network by exploiting the interference between the loops of a node and the cycles of the temporal pattern of failures. In the limit of long failure cycles we show analytically that the escape in a node is larger than the one estimated from a stochastic failure with the same failure probability. We test our general formalism in two real-world networks (air-transportation and e-mail users) and show how communities lead to deviations from predictions for failures in hubs.

Global ballistic acceleration in a bouncing-ball model

The ballistic increase for the velocity of a particle in a bouncing-ball model was investigated. The phenomenon is caused by accelerating structures in phase space known as accelerator modes. They lead to a regular and monotonic increase of the velocity. Here, both regular and ballistic Fermi acceleration coexist in the dynamics, leading the dynamics to two different growth regimes. We characterized deaccelerator modes in the dynamics, corresponding to unstable points in the antisymmetric position of the accelerator modes. In control parameter space, parameter sets for which these accelerations and deaccelerations constitute structures were obtained analytically. Since the mapping is not symplectic, we found fractal basins of influence for acceleration and deacceleration bounded by the stable and unstable manifolds, where the basins affect globally the average velocity of the system.