Radiation-pressure induced chaos in multipendular Fabry-Perot resonators

Abstract: The occurrence of chaos in multipendular FP resonators (without light propagation delay) is illustrated. The probability of evolving a chaotic solution in a given time, starting from initial conditions contained in a neighbourhood of a stable equilibrium point, is estimated, and its dependence on the most relevant system parameters is investigated. The possible relevance of these results for interferometric gravitational wave antennas is discussed.