Statistics of branched flow in a weak correlated random potential

Recent images of electron flow through a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) device show branching behavior that is reproduced in numerical simulations of motion in a correlated random potential [cond-mat/0010348]. We show how such branching naturally 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 the statistical properties of the branching are confirmed by classical and quantum numerical tests.