# Experimental investigation of universal parametric correlators using a vibrating plate

## Abstract

The parametric variation of the eigenfrequencies of a chaotic plate is measured and compared to random matrix theory using recently calculated universal correlation functions. The sensitivity of the flexural modes of the plate to pressure is used to isolate this symmetry class of modes and simplify the data analysis. The size of the plate is used as the external parameter and the eigenvalues are observed to undergo one or two oscillations in the experimental window. The correlations of the eigenvalues are in good agreement with statistical measures such as the parametric number variance, the velocity autocorrelation, and the intralevel velocity autocorrelation derived for the Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble of random matrix theory. Our results show that the theory can be also applied to wave systems other than quantum systems.

It has been widely recognized that the eigenvalues of a quantum system show universal features that depend only on the presence or absence of chaos in the corresponding classical or ray system . For example, it has been established that the eigenvalues of integrable systems display Poisson statistics, and chaotic systems with time-reversal symmetry show statistics which are similar to the Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble (GOE) of Random Matrix Theory (RMT) . The universality has been confirmed using not only quantum systems, but also systems which obey an elastomechanical wave equation . The difference in the statistical properties has been recognized to be due to the presence of level repulsion which were demonstrated as avoided crossings as a system parameter was varied. However, it was postulated only recently that the resulting fluctuation of the energy levels also show universal properties which are independent of the nature of the parameter .

When a quantum system is subjected to a perturbation via an external parameter $`X`$, the eigenvalues change and oscillate as a function of $`X`$. Using supersymmetry techniques, Simons and Altshuler  were able to calculate the correlations as a function of external parameter for energy levels with Wigner-Dyson distributions of RMT. The agreement of their analytical results with numerical simulations of disordered metallic rings and a chaotic billiard led them to the remarkable conjecture that correlations in the eigenvalues show universal features which are independent of the nature of the perturbation after appropriate normalization. Here the proper rescaling required to compare across different systems is given by expressing the energy $`E`$ in units of the local mean level spacing $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, and the parameter in units of the square root of the local mean squared slope:

$$\epsilon =E/\mathrm{\Delta }x=\sqrt{\left(\frac{d\epsilon }{dX}\right)^2}X,$$
(1)   
where $`\epsilon `$ is the normalized energy, and $`x`$ is the rescaled external parameter.

The conjecture was tested further with numerical simulations of a Hydrogen atom in a magnetic field, where agreement was found over a certain parameter range, but systematic deviations were also found because the system is only partially chaotic . Although some of the correlations have been indirectly tested in the conductance fluctuations of electrons in ballistic cavities , and also in microwave cavities  and quartz blocks  where bouncing ball-like modes complicates the analysis, there has been no report of a direct experimental test of their universality.

In this paper, we report direct experimental evidence for the universality of the above mentioned parametric correlators. A freely vibrating plate with the shape of a Sinai-Stadium  is used and the smooth motion of the eigenfrequencies is measured as a function of the size of the plate. Two classes of uncoupled modes exist in an isotropic plate: flexural, for which the displacement is perpendicular to the plane of the plate, and in-plane, for which the displacement is in the plane of the plate . We are able to experimentally isolate the flexural modes and therefore can simplify the analysis by not having to consider problems associated with mixed symmetries. The flexural modes obey a scalar equation for the displacement $`W`$ perpendicular to the plate:

$$(^2k^2)(^2+k^2)W=0,$$
(2)   
where $`k`$ denotes the wavenumber. The dispersion relation is given by

$$f=\frac{k^2}{2\pi }\sqrt{\frac{E_Yh^3}{12\rho (1\nu ^2)}},$$
(3)   
where $`f`$ is the frequency, $`h`$ is the thickness of the plate, $`\rho `$ is the density, $`E_Y`$ is Young’s modulus, and $`\nu `$ is Poisson’s ratio. Any solution $`W`$ of Eq. (2) can be written as a superposition of two modes, $`W_1`$ and $`W_2`$, where

$$(^2+k^2)W_1=0\text{and}(^2k^2)W_2=0.$$
(4)   
$`W_1`$ is a solution to the Helmholtz equation with free boundary conditions. $`W_2`$ is an exponential mode or boundary mode. The boundary modes are responsible for only about one percent of the density of states  and do not appear to alter the universality of the eigenvalues. Equation (2) is an approximation to the full elastomechanical wave equation in the limit where the wavelength is much larger than the thickness of the plate. The typical wavelength in our experiments is 8 mm, and the thickness of the plate is 2 mm. In this case, Eq. (2) is a good approximation.

The eigenvalue statistics is first confirmed to agree very well with GOE statistics using traditional measures such as the spacing statistics $`P(s)`$ and the spectral rigidity $`\mathrm{\Delta }_3(L)`$, demonstrating the quality of the data and the universality of the geometry. We then compare statistical observables of the eigenvalue motion as a function of the parameter to analytical calculations. In particular, we find that the data agrees with calculations of the parametric number variance $`v(x)`$ by Simons et al.  and shows a linear behavior for small $`x`$ which is different from semiclassical calculations . To investigate correlations in energy-parameter space, comparisons are made with the exact calculations for the intralevel velocity autocorrelation $`\stackrel{~}{c}(w,x)`$ which describes the correlations between the rate of change of eigenvalues separated in energy by $`w`$ and in parameter by $`x`$ . Good agreement is observed for selected values of $`w`$ and over all $`x`$. Another statistical measure is the velocity autocorrelation $`c(x)`$ which correlates the rate of change of eigenvalue as a function of parametric separation $`x`$. For this quantity we find that the data is in good agreement at small and intermediate values of the parameter. Deviations are observed for larger $`x`$ where statistical sampling is poor. Combined, these results provide the first experimental evidence for the universality of a broad class of the statistical observables of parametric level motion that have been studied theoretically.

In the experiments we use an Aluminium plate of thickness 2.0 mm, machined in the shape of a quarter Sinai-Stadium with radii 40 mm and 70 mm (see Fig. 1). The plate rests on three piezoelectric transducers, of which one is a transmitter and two are receivers. We measure acoustic transmission spectra of the plate using a HP 4395A network analyzer. A sample of the transmission signal at different values of the parameter is shown in Fig. 1. The amplitude of the resonances depend on the location of the transducers but the eigenfrequencies are unchanged. The plate is kept in a temperature controlled oven held at 300 K to within 1 mK. A vacuum system ensures that the air pressure is below $`10^1`$ Torr, which is low enough that air damping of the plate is insignificant compared to other damping mechanisms. Of the two classes of modes, flexural modes are more sensitive to the presence of air damping than in-plane modes because of the flexural out-of-plane oscillation. We find that going from vacuum to atmospheric pressure, the $`Q`$-factor of the flexural modes decreases by at least a factor of 3, whereas the $`Q`$-factor for the in-plane modes is unchanged.

We first measure the transmission spectrum of the plate, then decrease the size of the plate by sanding off material at the longest straight edge, as indicated in Fig. 1. The amount of material removed is determined by measuring the mass of the plate to within $`5\times 10^5`$ grams. Approximately $`5\times 10^2`$ grams is removed each time and in all 6% of the material is removed in 63 steps. The spectrum is measured in the interval between 100 kHz and 300 kHz. Periodically, the spectrum is also measured at 1 atmosphere to identify the flexural modes. After this separation, we find approximately 300 resonances, of which 25 drift out of the frequency window due to the overall increase in frequency when the size of the plate is decreased. A resonance frequency can be determined to within 0.5 Hz by fitting the resonance peak to a Breit-Wigner function. We are confident that all eigenfrequencies in the frequency window are detected, because it is impossible for the amplitude of a resonance peak to lie below our detection level for all 63 values of the parameter. The absence of interaction of the flexural modes with the in-plane modes is checked to within experimental accuracy by noting a lack of interaction at flexural-in-plane encounters (see Fig. 1).

In the data analysis, the implementation of the normalization or unfolding given by Eq. (1) is of great importance. Since the cumulative level density or staircase function for a freely vibrating plate was recently calculated , both the mean level spacing and the mean squared velocity are known analytically. This knowledge can be directly applied to our data, which makes the data analysis very clean from a theoretical viewpoint.

We start by presenting our result for the distribution of nearest neighbor spacings $`P(s)`$ and the spectral rigidity $`\mathrm{\Delta }_3(L)`$ which are shown in Fig. 2. We find complete agreement with RMT for both observables. Fully chaotic systems are very rare and most chaotic geometries have regions in phase space which are integrable. The Sinai-Stadium geometry is no exception and is known to have small regions of integrability. However if these regions are very small, they can support an integrable level only at very high frequencies, and therefore complete agreement with GOE is expected and observed.

We now present the main results which is the correlations in the parametric variation of the eigenfrequencies. The parametric number variance $`v(x)`$ is defined as:

$$v(x)=(n(\epsilon ,x^{})n(\epsilon ,x^{}+x))^2,$$
(5)   
where the average is over the parameter $`x^{}`$ and energy $`\epsilon `$. Here, $`n(\epsilon ,x)`$ is the staircase function which counts the number of energy levels at fixed $`x`$ with energy lower than $`\epsilon `$. The parameter $`x`$ has been normalized according to Eq. (1), as explained above. The variance measures the difference in the number of eigenvalues which are below a fixed value of normalized energy $`\epsilon `$. Therefore this quantity measures the collective motion of levels under parametric change . The comparison of the data with the theory is shown in Fig. 3. The $`v(x)`$ calculated from the data grows linearly from zero and has a slope of $`0.8\pm 0.01`$ which is in excellent agreement with the calculated value of $`\sqrt{2/\pi }0.797`$ by Simons et al. . A saturation is expected at large values of $`x`$ and therefore the $`v(x)`$ becomes sub-linear at higher $`x`$.

However, $`v(x)`$ does not give an indication of the correlations in the oscillations of the eigenvalues with the parameter $`x`$. To investigate such correlations, a new set of measures are required that study the rate of change of eigenvalue as a function of parameter . One example is the intralevel velocity autocorrelation $`\stackrel{~}{c}(\omega ,x)`$, which correlates velocities which are separated by a distance $`x`$ in parameter space and by a distance $`\omega `$ in energy:

$$\stackrel{~}{c}(\omega ,x)=\frac{\underset{n,m}{}\delta (\epsilon _n(x^{})\epsilon _m(x^{}+x)\omega )\frac{\epsilon _n(x^{})}{x^{}}\frac{\epsilon _m(x^{}+x)}{x^{}}}{_{n,m}\delta (\epsilon _n(x^{})\epsilon _m(x^{}+x)\omega )}$$
(6)   
The average is over the parameter $`x^{}`$. Using the supersymmetric nonlinear $`\sigma `$ model developed by Efetov , Simons and Altshuler derived an integral representation for the intralevel velocity autocorrelation. Another correlation is the velocity autocorrelation $`c(x)`$ which correlates velocities which belong to the same energy level:

$$c(x)=\frac{\epsilon (x^{})}{x^{}}\frac{\epsilon (x^{}+x)}{x^{}}$$
(7)   
The brackets denote an average over the parameter $`x^{}`$ and the energy $`\epsilon `$. For this correlator no analytical results exist for intermediate values of $`x`$. Therefore we compare our result for $`c(x)`$ to a curve calculated by Mucciolo  using large GOE matrices which agrees with the analytical results in the limit of large and small $`x`$.

We first present the result for the velocity autocorrelation $`c(x)`$ (see Fig. 4). For values of $`x`$ smaller than 1, we find good agreement with the numerical RMT curve . At larger values of $`x`$, however, we see a deviation which is outside the experimental error bars. The shape of the correlation function indicates that the slope $`\epsilon (x)/x`$ changes smoothly and has opposite signs near $`x=0.5`$ because the parameter $`x`$ has been normalized to correspond to approximately one oscillation for $`x=1`$. This behavior of the correlation functions indicates that, locally, there is a particular length scale over which eigenfrequencies oscillate. The distribution of velocities $`\epsilon (x)/x`$ of the eigenvalues should be a Gaussian with a mean value of zero. The data is shown in the inset to Fig. 4. The data is close to a Gaussian, but is slightly asymmetric with more velocities of small magnitude which are negative than positive. We emphasize that the mean slope is zero, indicating that this discrepancy does not originate in the normalization of the eigenfrequencies. We believe that the deviation is due to a finite data set. It appears that the correlations are very robust and give good agreement even if the velocity distribution is not exactly Gaussian.

To make a more stringent test of the correlations, we compare our data with the intralevel velocity autocorrelation $`\stackrel{~}{c}(\omega ,x)`$ for $`\omega =0.25`$, $`\omega =0.50`$, and $`\omega =1.0`$ as shown in Fig. 5. We compare our data to a numerical evaluation of the integral representation of this correlator . In calculating these quantities we have averaged over a small energy window of $`\delta \omega =0.03`$ which is also done in the theoretical calculations. The occurrence of the peaks in the correlation functions and the systematic increase of the value of $`x`$ where the peak occurs can be understood from the fact that near an avoided crossing, one has to go across by nearly as much along the normalized energy axis as along the parameter axis to encounter a similar slope (see Fig. 1). The comparison of the data in Fig. 5 shows very good agreement for all three values of $`\omega `$, validating the theory.

In conclusion, we have investigated experimentally the parametric level motion of the flexural modes of a freely vibrating plate as a function of the size of the plate. We have used our data to calculate statistical quantities which probe the parametric motion of the levels, and found agreement with the universal predictions of RMT. The agreement with RMT suggests that the universal predictions for parametric level motion extends beyond quantum chaotic systems to a wider range of wave systems, including acoustical waves.

We thank B. Simons and E. Mucciolo for providing the theoretical data, and M. Oxborrow and J. Norton for technical assistance. We thank O. Brodier and H. Gould for useful discussions. This work was supported by the Danish National Research Council (K.S.), Research Corporation and by an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (A.K.). We thank Hewlett-Packard for a partial equipment grant.