English

Devil's Staircase -- Rotation Number of Outer Billiard with Polygonal Invariant Curves

Dynamical Systems 2014-02-12 v1

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss rotation number on the invariant curve of a one parameter family of outer billiard tables. Given a convex polygon η\eta, we can construct an outer billiard table TT by cutting out a fixed area from the interior of η\eta. TT is piece-wise hyperbolic and the polygon η\eta is an invariant curve of TT under the billiard map ϕ\phi. We will show that, if β\beta is a periodic point under the outer billiard map with rational rotation number τ=p/q\tau = p / q, then the nnth iteration of the billiard map is not the local identity at β\beta. This proves that the rotation number τ\tau as a function of the area parameter is a devil's staircase function.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1402.2319,
  title  = {Devil's Staircase -- Rotation Number of Outer Billiard with Polygonal Invariant Curves},
  author = {Zijian Yao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1402.2319},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

15 pages, 12 figures