Statistics of branched flow in a weak correlated random potential.

Recent images of electron flow through a two-dimensional electron gas device show branching behavior that is reproduced in numerical simulations of motion in a correlated random potential [M. A. Topinka, Nature 410, 183 (2001)]]. We show how such branching arises from caustics in the classical flow and find a simple scaling behavior of the branching under variation of the random potential strength. Analytic results describing statistical properties of the branching are confirmed by classical and quantum numerical tests.