Chaos in composite billiards

Abstract

The mechanisms and features of the chaotic behavior in billiards with ray splitting (refraction) are considered. In contrast to ordinary billiards, the law of motion in composite billiards that is coded with a sequence of ray visits to different media is shown to be deterministically chaotic. The analysis is performed in terms of a geometrical-dynamical approach in which a symmetric phase space is used instead of the ordinary Hamiltonian phase space. The chaotization elements in composite billiards of a general position are studied. The dynamics of rays in ring billiards consisting of two concentric media with different refractive indices is considered.