In the present doctoral thesis properties of the energy spectra and the wave functions of quantum billiards with flat microwave resonators, so-called microwave billiards, were investigated experimentally. Essentially two main issues were pursued. First, the localisation of the wave functions of pseudointegrable billiards, so-called superscars, and second, statistical properties of the nodal domains of the wave functions of such systems have been investigated. To realise these studies, an experimental setup for the measurement of the intensity distribution of the electric field strength in microwave billiards was designed. The underlying technique is based on the perturbation body method which had been developed originally in the context of radar technics. With this setup the intensity distributions of highly excited resonance states, which were not experimentally accessible up to now, were measured. Using a reconstruction method, which was developed in the framework of the present doctoral thesis, the electric field strength distribtions and therewith the wave functions of the corresponding quantum billiard were obtained. The localisation properties of the wave functions of seudointegrable systems were studied in a symmetric barrier billiard. This is a rectangular billiard containing an infinitely thin barrier along its symmetry line. This particular billiard was chosen for the studies because the structure of its classical periodic orbits is especially simple, thus facilitating the semiclassical construction of the superscar states. Due to the symmetry of the billiard there exist two symmetry classes for its eigenstates, namely states which are symmetric, and states which are antisymmetric with respect to reflection about the symmetry line of the barrier billiard. Using the measured intensity distributions the eigenvalue spectrum could be separated into two spectra, one corresponding to the symmetric, the other to the antisymmetric states, respectively. The spectral properties of both parts of the spectrum were studied separately. For all intensity distributions corresponding to symmetric states the related wave function was reconstructed. Several wave functions with a pronounced localisation of field intensity around a family of periodic orbits were observed. A qualitative identification of the superscars was carried out by computing the overlap integral of the experimental wave functions and, respectively, one of the analytically constructed superscar state. The agreement with the theoretical prediction is very good as at essentially every semiclassically predicted frequency an experimental wave function was found. Recently, several theoretical and experimental studies showed, that the properties of the nodal domains of the wave functions of chaotic and regular systems differ. Accordingly, the statistical properties of the nodal domains were investigated in the present doctoral thesis for the pseudointegrable barrier billiard. For such systems there are still no theoretical results. | English |