English

Regular simplices and periodic billiard orbits

Dynamical Systems 2014-09-23 v3

Abstract

A simplex is the convex hull of n+1n+1 points in Rn\mathbb{R}^{n} which form an affine basis. A regular simplex Δn\Delta^n is a simplex with sides of the same length. We consider the billiard flow inside a regular simplex of Rn\mathbb{R}^n. We show the existence of two types of periodic trajectories. One has period n+1n+1 and hits once each face. The other one has period 2n2n and hits nn times one of the faces while hitting once any other face. In both cases we determine the exact coordinates for the points where the trajectory hits the boundary of the simplex.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1112.2370,
  title  = {Regular simplices and periodic billiard orbits},
  author = {Nicolas Bedaride and Michael Rao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.2370},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

To appear Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society

R2 v1 2026-06-21T19:49:23.718Z