Competition between unlimited and limited energy growth in a two-dimensional time-dependent billiard

Some dynamical properties for a dissipative time-dependent Lorentz gas are studied. We assume that the size of the scatterers change periodically in time. We show that for some combination of the control parameters the particles come to a complete stop between the scatterers, but for some other cases, the average velocity grows unbounded. This is the first time that the unlimited energy growth is observed in a dissipative system. Finally, we study the behavior of the average velocity as a function of the number of collisions and we show that the system is scaling invariant with scaling exponents well defined.