Ergodic billiards that are not quantum unique ergodic (with an appendix by Andrew Hassell and Luc Hillairet)

Abstract

Partially rectangular domains are compact two-dimensional Riemannian manifolds $X$, either closed or with boundary, that contain a flat rectangle or cylinder. In this paper we are interested in partially rectangular domains with ergodic billiard flow; examples are the Bunimovich stadium, the Sinai billiard or Donnelly surfaces.

We consider a one-parameter family $X_t$ of such domains parametrized by the aspect ratio $t$ of their rectangular part. There is convincing theoretical and numerical evidence that the Laplacian on $X_t$ with Dirichlet, Neumann or Robin boundary conditions is not quantum unique ergodic (QUE). We prove that this is true for all $t \in [1,2]$ excluding, possibly, a set of Lebesgue measure zero. This yields the first examples of ergodic billiard systems proven to be non-QUE.