Observation of periodic orbits on curved two-dimensional geometries.

We measure elastomechanical spectra for a family of thin shells. We show that these spectra can be described by a "semiclassical" trace formula comprising periodic orbits on geodesics, with the periods of these orbits consistent with those extracted from experiment. The influence of periodic orbits on spectra in the case of two-dimensional curved geometries is thereby demonstrated, where the parameter corresponding to Planck's constant in quantum systems involves the wave number and the curvature radius. We use these findings to explain the marked clustering of levels when the shell is hemispherical.

Spectrum of stochastic evolution operators: local matrix representation approach.

A matrix representation of the evolution operator associated with a nonlinear stochastic flow with additive noise is used to compute its spectrum. In the weak noise limit a perturbative expansion for the spectrum is formulated in terms of local matrix representations of the evolution operator centered on classical periodic orbits. The evaluation of perturbative corrections is easier to implement in this framework than in the standard Feynman diagram perturbation theory. The results are perturbative corrections to a stochastic analog of the Gutzwiller semiclassical spectral determinant computed to several orders beyond what has so far been attainable in stochastic and quantum-mechanical applications.