Related papers: Shortest billiard trajectories

This thesis consists of five papers about reduced spherical convex bodies and in particular spherical bodies of constant width on the $d$-dimensional sphere $S^d$. In paper I we present some facts describing the shape of reduced bodies of…

It is known that $C^1$-smooth strictly convex Radon norms in $\mathbb{R}^2$ can be characterized by the property that the outer billiard map, which corresponds to the unit ball of the norm, has an invariant curve consisting of 4-periodic…

We consider the problem of finding a geodesic disc of smallest radius containing at least $k$ points from a set of $n$ points in a simple polygon that has $m$ vertices, $r$ of which are reflex vertices. We refer to such a disc as a SKEG…

We investigate the rotation sets of billiards on the $m$-dimensional torus with one small convex obstacle and in the square with one small convex obstacle. In the first case the displacement function, whose averages we consider, measures…

A Finsler, not necessarily symmetric, metric in the plane or its convex subset is called projective if its geodesics are straight segments. We consider Finsler billiards in a convex planar domain endowed with a projective Finsler metric. A…

In this article, we present an approximation algorithm for solving the Weighted Region Problem amidst a set of $ n $ non-overlapping weighted disks in the plane. For a given parameter $ \varepsilon \in (0,1]$, the length of the approximate…

A simple n-gon is a polygon with n edges such that each vertex belongs to exactly two edges and every other point belongs to at most one edge. Brass, Moser and Pach asked the following question: For n > 3 odd, what is the maximum perimeter…

We study non-Birkhoff periodic orbits in symmetric convex planar billiards. Our main result provides a quantitative criterion for the existence of such orbits with prescribed minimal period, rotation number, and spatiotemporal symmetry. We…

In this paper we investigate the existence of closed billiard trajectories in not necessarily smooth convex bodies. In particular, we show that if a body $K\subset \mathbb{R}^d$ has the property that the tangent cone of every non-smooth…

Given a planar oval, consider the maximal area of inscribed $n$-gons resp. the minimal area of circumscribed $n$-gons. One obtains two sequences indexed by $n$, and one of Dowker's theorems states that the first sequence is concave and the…

We study the set of combinatorial lengths of asymmetric periodic trajectories on the regular pentagon, proving a density-one version of a conjecture of Davis-Lelievre.

We give an optical physicist view of the problem of the trajectories in a polygonal billiard using only basic facts of Optics and the theory of functions of a complex variable. This approach allow us to stablish a certain correspondence…

Given a polygon $P$, for two points $s$ and $t$ contained in the polygon, their \emph{geodesic distance} is the length of the shortest $st$-path within $P$. A \emph{geodesic disk} of radius $r$ centered at a point $v \in P$ is the set of…

We consider the dual billiard map with respect to a smooth strictly convex closed hypersurface in linear 2m-dimensional symplectic space and prove that it has at least 2m distinct 3-periodic orbits.

Given a set of $n$ points in the Euclidean plane, such that just $k$ points are strictly inside the convex hull of the whole set, we want to find the shortest tour visiting every point. The fastest known algorithm for the version when $k$…

We generalize the following simple geometric fact: the only centrally symmetric convex curve of constant width is a circle. Billiard interpretation of the condition of constant width reads: a planar curve has constant width, if and only if,…

In the recent paper arXiv:2405.13258, the first author of this note proved that if a billiard in a convex domain in $\mathbb{R}^n$ is simultaneously projective and Minkowski, then it is the standard Euclidean billiard in an appropriate…

We study dissipative polygonal outer billiards, i.e. outer billiards about convex polygons with a contractive reflection law. We prove that dissipative outer billiards about any triangle and the square are asymptotically periodic, i.e. they…

We give lowed bounds on the number of periodic trajectories in strictly convex smooth billiards in $\R^{m+1}$ for $m\ge 3$. For plane billiards (when m=1) such bounds were obtained by G. Birkhoff in the 1920's. Our proof is based on…

We develop a framework for dealing with smooth approximations to billiards with corners in the two-dimensional setting. Let a polygonal trajectory in a billiard start and end up at the same billiard's corner point. We prove that smooth…