Microwave experiments using open chaotic cavities in the realm of the effective Hamiltonian formalism

published online 2012-07-30International audienceThe description of open quantum system successfully uses the concept of the effective Hamiltonian, which takes into account the coupling to the environment. The concept can be extended to classical waves. Exper- imentally, classical waves are very convenient as they allow to control boundaries, coupling and absorption. We combine here recent works with microwaves investigating properties of open systems which can be de- scribed by an effective Hamiltonian. This ranges from spectral properties like modifications to level dynam- ics, width distribution and coupling fidelity to spatial properties like intensity distributions and complexness parameter which describes the non-orthogonality of eigenfunctions