Suppressing Fermi acceleration in a two-dimensional non-integrable time-dependent oval-shaped billiard with inelastic collisions

Some dynamical properties of a classical particle confined inside a closed region with an oval-shaped boundary are studied. We have considered both the static and time-dependent boundaries. For the static case, the condition that destroys the invariant spanning curves in the phase space was obtained. For the time-dependent perturbation, two situations were considered: (i) non-dissipative and (ii) dissipative. For the non-dissipative case, our results show that Fermi acceleration is observed. When dissipation, via inelastic collisions, is introduced Fermi acceleration is suppressed. The behaviour of the average velocity for both the dissipative as well as the non-dissipative dynamics is described using the scaling approach. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.