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Related papers: Homotopical Complexity of 2D Billiard Orbits

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We show that the second iteration $T^2$ of the outer symplectic billiard map with respect to a convex domain $M$ in a symplectic vector space is approximated by an explicit Hamiltonian flow for points far away from $M$. More precisely,…

Symplectic Geometry · Mathematics 2025-08-22 Peter Albers , Ana Chavez Caliz , Serge Tabachnikov

We define a new class of plane billiards - the `pensive billiard' - in which the billiard ball travels along the boundary for some distance depending on the incidence angle before reflecting, while preserving the billiard rule of equality…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2025-09-23 Theodore D. Drivas , Daniil Glukhovskiy , Boris Khesin

The Hamiltonian flow of the standard metric Hamiltonian with respect to the twisted symplectic structure on the cotangent bundle describes the motion of a charged particle on the base. We prove that under certain natural hypotheses the…

Differential Geometry · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Viktor L. Ginzburg , Ely Kerman

Polygonal billiards exhibit a rich and complex dynamical behavior. In recent years polygonal billiards have attracted great attention due to their application in the understanding of anomalous transport, but also at the fundamental level,…

Chaotic Dynamics · Physics 2024-05-14 Jordan Orchard , Federico Frascoli , Lamberto Rondoni , Carlos Mejía-Monasterio

Consider two $k$-gons $P$ and $Q$. We say that the billiard flows in $P$ and $Q$ are homotopically equivalent if the set of conjugacy classes in the fundamental group of $P$ which contain a periodic billiard orbit agrees with the analogous…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2014-06-30 Jozef Bobok , Serge Troubetzkoy

We study a natural model of random 2-dimensional cubical complex which is a subcomplex of an n-dimensional cube, and where every possible square $2$-face is included independently with probability p. Our main result is to exhibit a sharp…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-09-21 Matthew Kahle , Elliot Paquette , Érika Roldán

We consider classical dynamical properties of a particle in a constant gravitational force and making specular reflections with circular, elliptic or oval boundaries. The model and collision map are described and a detailed study of the…

Chaotic Dynamics · Physics 2017-06-29 D. R. da Costa , C. P. Dettmann , E. D. Leonel

A "drivebelt" stadium billiard with boundary consisting of circular arcs of differing radius connected by their common tangents shares many properties with the conventional "straight" stadium, including hyperbolicity and mixing, as well as…

Chaotic Dynamics · Physics 2015-06-03 Carl P. Dettmann , Orestis Georgiou

The random billiard walk is a stochastic process $(L_t)_{t\geq 0}$ in which a laser moves through the Coxeter arrangement of an affine Weyl group in $\mathbb{R}^d$, reflecting at each hyperplane with probability $p\in (0, 1)$ and…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-08-19 Ruben Carpenter

The paper establishes the property of splittability of billiard boundary sequences in n dimensional cube into subsequences of fractional parts. This reveals a new property of integrable and weak perturbated Hamilton systems: under a simple…

chao-dyn · Physics 2016-08-31 A. Yu. Shahverdian

We present some foundational results about the outer length billiard system, including its generating function and the invariant area form. We describe the limiting behavior of the orbits far away from the billiard table: the orbits of the…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2025-10-10 Peter Albers , Lael Edwards-Costa , Serge Tabachnikov

In this paper we show that, under certain generic conditions, billiards on ovals have only a finite number of periodic orbits, for each period, all non-degenerate and at least one of them is hyperbolic. Moreover, the invariant curves of two…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2007-05-23 M. J. Dias Carneiro , S. Oliffson Kamphorst , S. Pinto-de-Carvalho

A periodic orbit on a frictionless billiard table is a piecewise linear path of a billiard ball that begins and ends at the same point with the same angle of incidence. The period of a primitive periodic orbit is the number of times the…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2021-04-08 Benjamin R. Baer , Faheem Gilani , Zhigang Han , Ronald Umble

The standard Wojtkowski-Markarian-Donnay-Bunimovich technique for the hyperbolicity of focusing or mixed billiards in the plane requires the diameter of a billiard table to be of the same order as the largest ray of curvature along the…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2008-10-15 Luca Bussolari , Marco Lenci

The billiard motion inside an ellipsoid $Q \subset \Rset^{n+1}$ is completely integrable. Its phase space is a symplectic manifold of dimension $2n$, which is mostly foliated with Liouville tori of dimension $n$. The motion on each…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2015-05-04 Pablo S. Casas , Rafael Ramirez-Ros

We show that there exists a $C^2$ open dense set of convex bodies with smooth boundary whose billiard map exhibits a non-trivial hyperbolic basic set. As a consequence billiards in generic convex bodies have positive topological entropy and…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2024-02-22 Mário Bessa , Gianluigi Del Magno , João Lopes Dias , José Pedro Gaivão , Maria Joana Torres

We consider a billiard in the punctured torus obtained by removing a small disk from the two-dimensional flat torus, with trajectory starting from the center of the puncture. In this case the phase space is given by the range of the…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2009-11-07 Florin P. Boca , Radu N. Gologan , Alexandru Zaharescu

Billiards in ellipses have a confocal ellipse or hyperbola as caustic. The goal of this paper is to prove that for each billiard of one type there exists an isometric counterpart of the other type. Isometry means here that the lengths of…

Chaotic Dynamics · Physics 2021-05-13 H. Stachel

We study stochastic billiards on general tables: a particle moves according to its constant velocity inside some domain ${\mathcal D} \subset {\mathbb R}^d$ until it hits the boundary and bounces randomly inside according to some reflection…

Probability · Mathematics 2012-01-31 Francis Comets , Serguei Popov , Gunter Schütz , Marina Vachkovskaia

The seminal physical model for investigating formulations of nonlinear dynamics is the billiard. Gravitational billiards provide an experimentally accessible arena for their investigation. We present a mathematical model that captures the…

Chaotic Dynamics · Physics 2015-03-19 Alexandre E. Hartl , Bruce N. Miller , Andre P. Mazzoleni