Stadium Billiard with Moving Walls

Abstract

We study the evolution of the energy distribution for a stadium with moving walls. We consider one period driving cycle, which is characterized by an amplitude $A$ and wall velocity $V$. This evolving energy distribution has both "parametric" and "stochastic" components. The latter are important for the theory of quantum irreversibility and dissipation in driven mesoscopic devices (eg in the context of quantum computation). For extremely slow wall velocity $V$ the spreading mechanism is dominated by transitions between neighboring levels, while for larger (non-adiabatic) velocities the spreading mechanism has both perturbative and non-perturbative features. We present, for the first time, a numerical study which is aimed in identifying the latter features. A procedure is developed for the determination of the various $V$ regimes. The possible implications on linear response theory are discussed.