We report the numerical observation of scarring, which is enhancement of probability density around unstable periodic orbits of a chaotic system, in the eigenfunctions of the classical Perron-Frobenius operator of noisy Anosov (“perturbed cat”) maps, as well as in the noisy Bunimovich stadium. A parallel is drawn between classical and quantum scars, based on the unitarity or nonunitarity of the respective propagators. For uniformly hyperbolic systems such as the cat map, we provide a mechanistic explanation for the classical phase-space localization detected, based on the distribution of finite-time Lyapunov exponents, and the interplay of noise with deterministic dynamics. Classical scarring can be measured by studying autocorrelation functions and their power spectra.

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• Chaos
• Chaotic advection
• Quantum chaos
• Floquet systems
• Stochastic dynamical systems
• Phase space methods