How time-reversal-invariance violation leads to enhanced backscattering with increasing openness of a wave-chaotic system.

We report on the experimental investigation of the dependence of the elastic enhancement, i.e., enhancement of scattering in the backward direction over scattering in other directions, of a wave-chaotic system with partially violated time-reversal (T) invariance on its openness. The elastic enhancement factor is a characteristic of quantum chaotic scattering which is of particular importance in experiments, like compound-nuclear reactions, where only cross sections, i.e., the moduli of the associated scattering matrix elements, are accessible. In the experiment a quantum billiard with the shape of a quarter bow tie, which generates a chaotic dynamics, is emulated by a flat microwave cavity. Partial T-invariance violation of varying strength 0≤ξ≲1 is induced by two magnetized ferrites. The openness is controlled by increasing the number M of open channels, 2≤M≤9, while keeping the internal absorption unchanged. We investigate the elastic enhancement as function of ξ and find that for a fixed M it decreases with increasing T-invariance violation, whereas it increases with increasing openness beyond a certain value of ξ≳0.2. The latter result is surprising because it is opposite to that observed in systems with preserved Tinvariance (ξ=0). We come to the conclusion that the effect of T-invariance violation on the elastic enhancement then dominates over the openness, which is crucial for experiments which rely on enhanced backscattering, since, generally, a decrease of the openness is unfeasible. Motivated by these experimental results, we performed theoretical investigations based on random matrix theory which confirm our findings.