Related papers: Poncelet's theorem and Billiard knots
This report provides an overview of theorems and statements related to a conjecture stated by D.W. Barnette in 1969 (which is an open problem in graph theory): Every cubic, bipartite, polyhedral graph contains a Hamilton cycle.
We conjecture two generalisations of Elkies' theorem on unimodular quadratic forms to non-unimodular forms. We give some evidence for these conjectures including a result for determinant 3. These conjectures, when combined with results of…
Using elementary ideas from Tropical Geometry, we assign a a tropical curve to every $q$-holonomic sequence of rational functions. In particular, we assign a tropical curve to every knot which is determined by the Jones polynomial of the…
We prove that the group of compactly supported symplectomorphisms of the standard symplectic ball admits a continuum of linearly independent real-valued homogeneous quasimorphisms. In addition these quasimorphisms are Lipschitz in the Hofer…
All the segments (or their continuations) of a billiard trajectory inside an ellipsoid of $\Rset^n$ are tangent to n-1 quadrics of the pencil of confocal quadrics determined by the ellipsoid. The quadrics associated to periodic billiard…
We use Ratner's theorem to compute the asymptotics of the number of (cylinders of) periodic trajectories in a rectangle with a barrier, assuming that the location p/q of the barrier is rational. We also show that as q tends to infinity, the…
We study Poncelet's Theorem in finite projective coordinate planes over the field $GF(p)$ and concentrate on a particular pencil of conics. For pairs of such conics we investigate whether we can find polygons with $n$ sides, which are…
We take a close look at a classical magic trick performed with a string, where a trivial knot is seemingly isotoped into a trefoil, and generalize it to a family of magic tricks for transforming the unknot into other knots. We encode such a…
We prove that every hyperbolic curve with a faithful action of a non-cyclic $p$-group (with a few exceptions if $p=2$) has a twisted form of index $1$ which satisfies Grothendieck's section conjecture. Furthermore, we prove that for every…
We solve the Jones conjecture, which states that the exponent sum in a minimal braid representation of a knot in S^3 is a knot invariant, by proving a generalized version of the original one. We apply contact geometry to study this problem…
We prove Euler's theorem of number theory developing an argument based on quandles. A quandle is an algebraic structure whose axioms mimic the three Reidemeister moves of knot theory.
We show that for almost every $(P,\lambda)$ where $P$ is a convex polygon and $\lambda\in(0,1)$, the corresponding outer billiard about $P$ with contraction $\lambda$ is asymptotically periodic, i.e., has a finite number of periodic orbits…
We compute the averages over elliptic curves of the constants occurring in the Lang-Trotter conjecture, the Koblitz conjecture, and the cyclicity conjecture. The results obtained confirm the consistency of these conjectures with the…
We study the Carnot theorem and the configuration of points and lines in connection with it. It is proven that certain significant points in the configuration lie on the same lines and same conics. The proof of an equivalent statement…
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…
Newton's potential of a massive homogeneous ellipsoid is derived via Dirichlet's discontinuous factor. At first we review part of Dirichlet's work in an English translation of the original German, and then continue with an extension of his…
We consider the model of a ball elastically bouncing on a racket moving in the vertical direction according to a given periodic function $f(t)$. The gravity force is acting on the ball. We prove that if the function $f(t)$ belongs to a…
Let M be a II_1 factor, A a masa in M and E the unique conditional expectation on A. Under some technical assumptions on the inclusion of A in M, which hold true for any semiregular masa of a separable factor, we show that for every…
We consider the Dirichlet problem in an ellipsoidal cylinder when the data function is entire. Under an additional assumption that the order of the data function is less than one, we show that there is a solution that extends as an entire…
In this note I provide two extensions of a particular case of the classical Poncelet theorem.