A finite-time exponent for random Ehrenfest gas
  We consider the motion of a system of free particles moving on a plane with regular hard polygonal scatterers arranged in a random manner. Calling this the Ehrenfest gas, which is known to have a zero Lyapunov exponent, we propose a finite-time exponent to characterize its dynamics. As the number of sides of the polygon goes to infinity, when polygon tends to a circle, we recover the usual Lyapunov exponent for the Lorentz gas from the exponent proposed here. To obtain this result, we generalize the reflection law of a beam of rays incident on a polygonal scatterer in a way that the formula for the circular scatterer is recovered in the limit of infinite number of vertices. Thus, chaos emerges from pseudochaos in an appropriate limit. 
Sanjay Moudgalya, Sarthak Chandra and Sudhir R. Jain
nlin.CD cond-mat.stat-mech