Chaotic and ballistic dynamics for two-dimensional electrons in periodic magnetic fields

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Abstract
We investigate the classical properties of electrons moving in a superposition of a uniform and periodically oscillating magnetic field. The most interesting dynamics occurs in the case where the uniform and periodic fields are of comparable order of magnitude and the periodic component originates from a planar arrangement of spins. For small energies almost the complete phase space is regular. With increasing energy the fraction of irregular orbits increases and eventually the phase space becomes completely chaotic. For higher energies we observe the appearance of a ballistic mode which allows the electrons to travel with high velocity through the magnetized spin lattice. This regular ballistic mode might be of relevance for transport processes in solid-state physics.