Infinite horizon billiards: Transport at the border between Gauss and Lévy universality classes.

Abstract

We consider transport in two billiard models, the infinite horizon Lorentz gas and the stadium channel, presenting analytical results for the spreading packet of particles. We first obtain the cumulative distribution function of traveling times between collisions, which exhibits nonanalytical behavior. Using a renewal assumption and the Lévy walk model, we obtain the particles' probability density. For the Lorentz gas, it shows a distinguished difference when compared with the known Gaussian propagator, as the latter is valid only for extremely long times. In particular, we show plumes of particles spreading along the infinite corridors, creating power-law tails of the density. We demonstrate the slow convergence rate via summation of independent and identically distributed random variables on the border between Lévy and Gauss laws. The renewal assumption works well for the Lorentz gas with intermediate-size scattering centers, but fails for the stadium channel due to strong temporal correlations. Our analytical results are supported with numerical samplings.