Chaotic Scattering: Exact Results and Microwave Experiments

Scattering experiments are indispensable for the study of classical and quantum systems. In the Heidelberg approach, universal features are addressed by assuming that the reaction zone is fully quantum chaotic. Although it stems from nuclear physics, it later on turned out to be applicable to a large variety of systems on different scales, including classical wave systems. For a long time, the distribution of the off-diagonal scattering-matrix elements resisted analytical treatment. I review two recent studies in which my collaborators and I fully solved this problem. We also carried out a comparison with data from microwave experiments