Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: The Simplest Piston Problem I: Elastic Collisions   We study the dynamics of three elastic particles in a finite interval where
two light particles are separated by a heavy ``piston''. The piston undergoes
surprisingly complex motion that is oscillatory at short time scales but
seemingly chaotic at longer scales. The piston also makes long-duration
excursions close to the ends of the interval that stem from the breakdown of
energy equipartition. Many of these dynamical features can be understood by
mapping the motion of three particles on the line onto the trajectory of an
elastic billiard in a highly skewed tetrahedral region. We exploit this picture
to construct a qualitative random walk argument that predicts a power-law tail,
with exponent -3/2, for the distribution of time intervals between successive
piston crossings of the interval midpoint. These predictions are verified by
numerical simulations.

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The categories of this paper are: econ
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The categories of this paper are: hep-th
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The categories of this paper are: hep-ex
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The categories of this paper are: cs
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The categories of this paper are: nlin
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The categories of this paper are: chem-ph
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The categories of this paper are: math-ph
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The categories of this paper are: eess
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The categories of this paper are: hep-lat
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The categories of this paper are: nucl-th
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The categories of this paper are: plasm-ph
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The categories of this paper are: atom-ph
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The categories of this paper are: gr-qc
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The categories of this paper are: quant-ph
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The categories of this paper are: comp-gas
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The categories of this paper are: cmp-lg