Chaotic scattering and transmission fluctuations

We discuss the phenomenon of chaotic scattering and its application in the study of transmission of electrons in mesoscopic devices as well as the transmission of microwaves through junctions. We show that the fact that the ray optics (classical dynamics) is chaotic, implies fluctuations in the observed transmission coefficients, whose statistics is determined by the theory of random matrices. We also show how the classical distribution functions which reflect the chaotic nature of the classical dynamics, determine the dependence of the correlations observed in the fluctuating transmission coefficients on external parameters. The time domain properties of chaotic scattering systems are also examined, and are shown to depend on the chaotic nature of the classical dynamics, together with a wave mechanical enhancement in time reversal invariant systems. Finally, we study the role of absorption and discuss its effects on the transmission fluctuations and their statistics.