Experimental Identification of Non-Newtonian Orbits Produced by Ray Splitting in a Dielectric-Loaded Microwave Cavity

Abstract

We use a thin dielectric-loaded microwave cavity to identify experimentally the signature of non-Newtonian periodic orbits caused by ray splitting at sharp, dielectric interfaces. In our experiments non-Newtonian orbits manifest themselves as distinctive peaks in the Fourier transform of the frequency spectrum, which cannot be assigned to any Newtonian periodic orbits. Because the electromagnetic Helmholtz and quantal Schr\"odinger equations are equivalent in two dimensions, our results are directly relevant to quantum chaos studies.