Slowly rocking symmetric, spatially periodic Hamiltonians: The role of escape and the emergence of giant transient directed transport

The nonintegrable Hamiltonian dynamics of particles placed in a symmetric, spatially periodic potential and subjected to a periodically varying field is explored. Such systems can exhibit a rich diversity of unusual transport features. In particular, depending on the setting of the initial phase of the drive, the possibility of a giant transient directed transport in a symmetric, space-periodic potential when driven with an adiabatically varying field arises. Here, we study the escape scenario and corresponding mean escape times of particles from a trapping region with the subsequent generation of a transient directed flow of an ensemble of particles. It is shown that for adiabatically slow inclination modulations the unidirectional flow proceeds over giant distances. The direction of escape and, hence, of the flow is entirely governed whether the periodic force, modulating the inclination of the potential, starts out initially positive or negative. In the phase space, this transient directed flow is associated with a long-lasting motion taking place within ballistic channels contained in the non-uniform chaotic layer. We demonstrate that for adiabatic modulations all escaping particles move ballistically into the same direction, leading to a giant directed current. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2008