English

Outer billiards in the spaces of oriented geodesics of the three dimensional space forms

Dynamical Systems 2025-03-11 v3 Differential Geometry

Abstract

Let MκM_{\kappa } be the three-dimensional space form of constant curvature κ=0,1,1\kappa =0,1,-1, that is, Euclidean space R3\mathbb{R}^{3}, the sphere S3S^{3} , or hyperbolic space H3H^{3}. Let SS be a smooth, closed, strictly convex surface in MκM_{\kappa }. We define an outer billiard map BB on the four dimensional space Gκ\mathcal{G}_{\kappa } of oriented complete geodesics of MκM_{\kappa }, for which the billiard table is the subset of Gκ\mathcal{G}_{\kappa } consisting of all oriented geodesics not intersecting SS. We show that BB is a diffeomorphism when SS is quadratically convex. For κ=1,1\kappa =1,-1, Gκ\mathcal{G}_{\kappa } has a K\"{a}hler structure associated with the Killing form of Iso(Mκ)\operatorname{Iso}(M_{\kappa }). We prove that BB is a symplectomorphism with respect to its fundamental form and that BB can be obtained as an analogue to the construction of Tabachnikov of the outer billiard in R2n\mathbb{R}^{2n} defined in terms of the standard symplectic structure. We show that BB does not preserve the fundamental symplectic form on Gκ\mathcal{G}_{\kappa } associated with the cross product on MκM_{\kappa }, for κ=0,1,1\kappa =0,1,-1. We initiate the dynamical study of this outer billiard in the hyperbolic case by introducing and discussing a notion of holonomy for periodic points.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.01679,
  title  = {Outer billiards in the spaces of oriented geodesics of the three dimensional space forms},
  author = {Yamile Godoy and Michael Harrison and Marcos Salvai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.01679},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

We corrected some typos and two signs in the last display in the proof of Proposition 1.3