English

X-ray microcomputed tomography of 3D chaotic microcavities

Optics 2025-11-05 v2

Abstract

Chaotic microcavities play a crucial role in several research areas, including the study of unidirectional microlasers, nonlinear optics, sensing, quantum chaos, and non-Hermitian physics. To date, most theoretical and experimental explorations have focused on two-dimensional (2D) chaotic dielectric microcavities, while there have been minimal studies on three-dimensional (3D) ones since precise geometrical information of a 3D microcavity can be difficult to obtain. Here, we image 3D microcavities with submicron resolution using X-ray microcomputed tomography (micro CT), enabling nondestructive imaging that preserves the sample for subsequent use. By analyzing the ray dynamics of a typical deformed microsphere, we demonstrate that a sufficient deformation along all three dimensions can lead to chaotic ray trajectories over extended time scales. Notably, using the X-ray micro CT reconstruction results, the phase space chaotic ray dynamics of a deformed microsphere are accurately established. X-ray micro CT could become a unique platform for the characterization of such deformed 3D microcavities by providing a precise means for determining the degree of deformation necessary for potential applications in ray chaos and quantum chaos.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.06393,
  title  = {X-ray microcomputed tomography of 3D chaotic microcavities},
  author = {Ke Tian and Mohammed Zia Jalaludeen and Yeon Ui Lee and Shilong Li and Sile Nic Chormaic},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.06393},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:03:15.191Z