Toppling Pencils-Macroscopic Randomness from Microscopic Fluctuations.

We construct a microscopic model to study discrete randomness in bistable systems coupled to an environment comprising many degrees of freedom. A quartic double well is bilinearly coupled to a finite number of harmonic oscillators. Solving the time-reversal invariant Hamiltonian equations of motion numerically, we show that for N=1, the system exhibits a transition with increasing coupling strength from integrable to chaotic motion, following the Kolmogorov-Arnol'd-Moser (KAM) scenario.