Electromagnetic chaos in mode-stirred reverberation enclosures

We study a simple (ray optical, scalar) model of mode-stirred electromagnetic reverberating enclosures. Extensive numerical simulations reveal consistently that spatial-field homogenization and (wide-sense) deterministic chaos occur together, as the time-harmonic peak displacement of the mode-stirring wall becomes comparable to the electromagnetic wavelength. Reverberation properties can thus be synthetically gauged by Lyapounov exponents. Semiquantitative design optimization criteria are obtained and possible generalizations are discussed.