Neutral particle focusing in composite driven dissipative billiards

Abstract

Dynamical focusing of ensembles of neutral particles in energy and configuration space has been demonstrated recently [C. Petri et al. 2010, Phys. Rev. E (R) {\bf 82}, 035204] using time-dependent elliptical billiards. The interplay of nonlinearity, dissipation and driving yields the occurrence of attractors in the phase space of the billiard. Here we show that dissipative oval billiards with slowly oscillating elliptical scatterers in the interior allow for a dynamical focusing on simple periodic trajectories with close to perfect efficiency. This setup should be more amenable to corresponding experiments which are briefly discussed.