The anomalously strong scarring of the electronic wave functions of quantum wells in a tilted magnetic field is shown to be due to special properties of the classical dynamics of this system. A certain subset of periodic orbits is identified which is nearly stable over a very large interval of variation of the system parameters; hence this subset exhibits strong scarring. Semiclassical arguments shed further light on why these orbits dominate the experimentally observed tunneling spectra.

• Received 20 May 1997

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.49