Related papers: Maximizing orbits for higher dimensional convex bi…
A body moves in a medium composed of noninteracting point particles; interaction of particles with the body is absolutely elastic. It is required to find the body's shape minimizing or maximizing resistance of the medium to its motion. This…
We introduce a new method for estimating the growth of various quantities arising in dynamical systems. We apply our method to polygonal billiards on surfaces of constant curvature. For instance, we obtain power bounds of degree two plus…
Billiard systems offer a simple setting to study regular and chaotic dynamics. Gravitational billiards are generalizations of these classical billiards which are amenable to both analytical and experimental investigations. Most previous…
In this paper the problem of maximizing the distance to a given fixed point over an intersection of balls is considered. It is known that this problem is NP complete in the general case, since any subset sum problem can be solved upon…
We show that two-dimensional billiard systems are Turing complete, in the sense that the halting of any Turing machine with a given input is equivalent to a certain bounded trajectory in this system entering a specified open set. Billiards…
We present a link between billiards in convex plane domains and Hofer's geometry, an area of symplectic topology. For smooth strictly convex billiard tables, we prove that the Hofer distance between the corresponding billiard ball maps…
The article studies a generalization of the elliptic billiard to the complex domain. We show that the billiard orbits also have caustics, and that the number of such caustics is bigger than for the real case. For example, for a given…
We show that for any natural number n, the set of domains containing absolutely periodic orbits of order n are dense in the set of bounded strictly convex domains with smooth boundary. The proof that such an orbit exists is an extension to…
We propose geometric tools that are suitable for studying the behavior of a billiard trajectory in a homogeneous force field. Two examples are considered: a vertical plane with an open top and with a parabolic or right angle boundary at the…
The classical Birkhoff conjecture claims that the boundary of a strictly convex integrable billiard table is necessarily an ellipse (or a circle as a special case). In this article we prove a complete local version of this conjecture: a…
We discuss various experiments on the time decay of velocity autocorrelation functions in billiards. We perform new experiments and find results which are compatible with an exponential mixing hypothesis, first put forward by [FM]: they do…
The constrained Dirichlet boundary value problem $\ddot x=f(t,x)$, $x(0)=x(T)$, is studied in billiard spaces, where impacts occur in boundary points. Therefore we develop the research on impulsive Dirichlet problems with state-dependent…
In this paper outer, or dual, billiards outside regular polygons are studied; in particular, periodic points for cases of strictly convex "tables" and for regular n-gons with n = 3,4,6,8,12 are discussed. The main results of the paper are:…
Given a strictly convex domain $\Omega$ in $\R^2$, there is a natural way to define a billiard map in it: a rectilinear path hitting the boundary reflects so that the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence. In this paper we…
The classical dynamics of the isotropic two-dimensional harmonic oscillator confined by an elliptic hard wall is discussed. The interplay between the harmonic potential with circular symmetry and the boundary with elliptical symmetry does…
The conjugation problem for billiard maps conjectures that if two strictly convex billiards have conjugated billiard maps, the billiard tables must be homothetic to each other. We show that if two billiard maps are conjugated, the…
We offer some theorems, mainly of finiteness, for certain patterns in elliptical billiards, related to periodic trajectories. For instance, if two players hit a ball at a given position and with directions forming a fixed angle in…
We discuss the interplay between the piece-line regular and vertex-angle singular boundary effects, related to integrability and chaotic features in rational polygonal billiards. The approach to controversial issue of regular and irregular…
A billiard is a dynamical system in which a particle alternates between motion in a straight line and specular reflection from a boundary. For billiards in non-convex areas bounded by segments of confocal quadrics are studied. The topology…
We introduce a new class of billiard-like system, ``bouncing outer billiards" which are 3-dimensional cousins of outer billiards of Neumann and Moser. We prove that bouncing outer billiard on a smooth convex body has at least four…