Related papers: Shortest billiard trajectories

We consider a billiard problem for compact domains bounded by confocal conics on a hyperboloid of one sheet in the Minkowski space. We show that there are two types of confocal families in such setting. Using an algebro-geometric…

Let $\ell \geq 2$ be an integer. For each $\eps >0$ remove from $\R^2$ the union of discs of radius $\eps$ centered at the integer lattice points $(m,n$, with $m\nequiv n\mod{\ell}$. Consider a point-like particle moving linearly at unit…

Euclidean billiard partitions were recently introduced by Andrews, Dragovic and Radnovic in their study of periodic trajectories of ellipsoidal billiards in the Euclidean space. They are integer partitions into distinct parts such that (E1)…

Let an $R$-body be the complement of the union of open balls of radius $R$ in $\mathbb{E}^d$. The $R$-hulloid of a closed not empty set $A$, the minimal $R$-body containing $A$, is investigated; if $A$ is the set of the vertices of a…

Globally non-positively curved, or CAT(0), polyhedral complexes arise in a number of applications, including evolutionary biology and robotics. These spaces have unique shortest paths and are composed of Euclidean polyhedra, yet many…

Sometimes, it is possible to represent a complicated polytope as a projection of a much simpler polytope. To quantify this phenomenon, the extension complexity of a polytope $P$ is defined to be the minimum number of facets of a (possibly…

The Borsuk number of a set S of diameter d >0 in Euclidean n-space is the smallest value of m such that S can be partitioned into m sets of diameters less than d. Our aim is to generalize this notion in the following way: The k-fold Borsuk…

We give topological lower bounds on the number of periodic and closed trajectories in strictly convex smooth billiards. We use variational reduction admitting a finite group of symmetries and apply topological approach based on equivariant…

Following a recent paper by Baryshnikov and Zharnitskii, we consider outer billiards in the plane possessing invariant curves consisting of periodic orbits. We prove the existence and abundance of such tables using tools from sub-Riemannian…

By continuation from the hyperbolic limit of the cardioid billiard we show that there is an abundance of bifurcations in the family of limacon billiards. The statistics of these bifurcation shows that the size of the stable intervals…

We study absolutely periodic points and trajectories of Hamiltonian systems. Our main result is a necessary and sufficient for a Hamiltonian system to have the following property: if there exists one absolutely periodic trajectory then all…

Let $P$ be a simple polygon of $n$ vertices. We consider two-point $L_1$ shortest path queries in $P$. We build a data structure of $O(n)$ size in $O(n)$ time such that given any two query points $s$ and $t$, the length of an $L_1$ shortest…

We consider packings of the plane using discs of radius 1 and r. A packing is compact if every disc D is tangent to a sequence of discs D_1, D_2, ..., D_n such that D_i is tangent to D_{i+1}. We prove that there are only nine values of r…

We study resonant billiard trajectories within quadrics in the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space. We relate them to the theory of approximation, in particular the extremal rational functions on the systems of $d$ intervals on the real line.…

We experimentally investigate electrical transport properties of graphene, which is a two dimensional (2D) conductor with relativistic energy dispersion relation. By investigating single- and bi-layer graphene devices with different aspect…

We revisit the classic task of finding the shortest tour of $n$ points in $d$-dimensional Euclidean space, for any fixed constant $d \geq 2$. We determine the optimal dependence on $\varepsilon$ in the running time of an algorithm that…

The notions of reflection from outside, reflection from inside and signature of a billiard trajectory within a quadric are introduced. Cayley-type conditions for periodical trajectories for the billiard in the region bounded by $k$ quadrics…

We present an algorithm to find an {\it Euclidean Shortest Path} from a source vertex $s$ to a sink vertex $t$ in the presence of obstacles in $\Re^2$. Our algorithm takes $O(T+m(\lg{m})(\lg{n}))$ time and $O(n)$ space. Here, $O(T)$ is the…

We introduce symplectic billiards for pairs of possibly non-convex polygons. After establishing basic properties, we give several criteria on pairs of polygons for the symplectic billiard map to be fully periodic, i.e. $\textit{every}$…

We derive an analytical trace formula for the level density of the two-dimensional elliptic billiard using an improved stationary phase method. The result is a continuous function of the deformation parameter (eccentricity) through all…