English

On foci of ellipses inscribed in cyclic polygons

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2021-02-01 v1 Algebraic Geometry Complex Variables

Abstract

Given a natural number n3n\geq3 and two points aa and bb in the unit disk D\mathbb D in the complex plane, it is known that there exists a unique elliptical disk having aa and bb as foci that can also be realized as the intersection of a collection of convex cyclic nn-gons whose vertices fill the whole unit circle T\mathbb T. What is less clear is how to find a convenient formula or expression for such an elliptical disk. Our main results reveal how orthogonal polynomials on the unit circle provide a useful tool for finding such a formula for some values of nn. The main idea is to realize the elliptical disk as the numerical range of a matrix and the problem reduces to finding the eigenvalues of that matrix.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2101.12638,
  title  = {On foci of ellipses inscribed in cyclic polygons},
  author = {Markus Hunziker and Andrei Martinez-Finkelshtein and Taylor Poe and Brian Simanek},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.12638},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

19 pages, 9 figures