Electron Climbing a 'Devil's Staircase' in Wave-Particle Interaction

Journal Article · Sat Dec 31 00:00:00 EST 2005 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.264102· OSTI ID:20771640

Macor, Alessandro; Doveil, Fabrice; Elskens, Yves ^[1]

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1. Physique des interactions ioniques et moleculaires, Unite 6633 CNRS-Universite de Provence, Equipe turbulence plasma, case 321, Centre de Saint-Jerome, F-13397 Marseille cedex 20 (France)

Numerous nonlinear driven systems display spectacular responses to forcing, including chaos and complex phase-locking plateaus characterized by 'devil's staircase', Arnold tongues, and Farey trees. In the universality class of Hamiltonian systems, a paradigm is the motion of a charged particle in two waves, which inspired a renormalization group method for its description. Here we report the observation of the underlying 'devil's staircase' by recording the beam velocity distribution function at the outlet of a traveling wave tube versus the amplitude of two externally induced waves.

• OSTI ID: 20771640
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Vol. 95, Issue 26; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.264102; (c) 2005 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
AMPLITUDES
CHAOS THEORY
CHARGED PARTICLES
DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS
ELECTRONS
HAMILTONIANS
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
PARTICLE INTERACTIONS
RENORMALIZATION
TRAVELLING WAVE TUBES
VELOCITY