When is high-dimensional scattering chaos essentially two dimensional? Measuring the product structure of singularities.

We demonstrate how the area of the enveloping surface of the scattering singularities in a three-degrees-of-freedom (3-dof) system depends on a perturbation parameter controlling the distance from a reducible case. This dependence is monotonic and approximately linear. Therefore it serves as a measure for this distance, which can be extracted from an investigation of the fractal structure. These features are a consequence of the dynamics being governed by normally hyperbolic invariant manifolds. We conclude that typical n-dof chaotic scattering exhibits either structures developing out of a stack of chaotic structures of 2-dof type or hardly any chaotic effects.