Related papers: Shortest billiard trajectories
We show that the number of lattice directions in which a d-dimensional convex body in R^d has minimum width is at most 3^d-1, with equality only for the regular cross-polytope. This is deduced from a sharpened version of the 3^d-theorem due…
In this paper we study 1/k geodesics, those closed geodesics that minimize on all subintervals of length $L/k$, where $L$ is the length of the geodesic. We develop new techniques to study the minimizing properties of these curves on doubled…
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 we study convex caustics in Minkowski billiards. We show that for the Euclidean billiard dynamics in a planar smooth centrally symmetric and strictly convex body $K$, for every convex caustic which $K$ possesses, the "dual"…
We consider a billiard in the plane with periodic configuration of convex scatterers. This system is recurrent, in the sense that almost every orbit comes back arbitrarily close to the initial point. In this paper we study the time needed…
We study billiards in domains enclosed by circular polygons. These are closed $C^1$ strictly convex curves formed by finitely many circular arcs. We prove the existence of a set in phase space, corresponding to generic sliding trajectories…
We study the reverse shortest path problem on disk graphs in the plane. In this problem we consider the proximity graph of a set of $n$ disks in the plane of arbitrary radii: In this graph two disks are connected if the distance between…
In the spirit of the Genetics of the Regular Figures, by L. Fejes T\'oth, we prove the following theorem: If $2n$ points are selected in the $n$-dimensional Euclidean ball $B^n$ so that the smallest distance between any two of them is as…
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…
It is well-known that billiards in polygons cannot be chaotic (hyperbolic). Particularly Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy of any polygonal billiard is zero. We consider physical polygonal billiards where a moving particle is a hard disc rather than…
We derive lower estimates for the approximation of the $d$-dimensional Euclidean ball by polytopes with a fixed number of $k$-dimensional faces, $k\in\{0,1,\ldots,d-1\}$. The metrics considered include the intrinsic volume difference and…
A subset of the d-dimensional Euclidean space having nonempty interior is called a spindle convex body if it is the intersection of (finitely or infinitely many) congruent d-dimensional closed balls. The spindle convex body is called a…
We prove some partial results on the periodicity of billiard systems on graphs. The results specialize to the case of $n$ billiards with equal mass on the unit interval or circle traveling at the same speed.
We consider the outer billiards map with contraction outside polygons. We construct a 1-parameter family of systems such that each system has an open set in which the dynamics is reduced to that of a piecewise contraction on the interval.…
We give the asymptotic growth of the number of primitive periodic trajectories of a two dimensional dispersive billiard, when we prescribe their number of bounces on one of the obstacles.
In this paper we prove two asymptotic estimates for pairs of closed trajectories for open billiards similar to those established by Pollicott and Sharp for closed geodesics on negatively curved compact surfaces. The first of these estimates…
I announce a solution of the conjecture about the measure of periodic points for planar billiard tables. The theorem says that if $\Om\subset\R^2$ is a compact domain with piecewise $C^3$ boundary, then the set of periodic orbits for the…
Let $s$ be a source point and $t$ be a destination point inside an $n$-vertex simple polygon $P$. Euclidean shortest paths and minimum-link paths between $s$ and $t$ inside $P$ have been well studied. Both these kinds of paths are simple…
The periodic orbits of the strongly chaotic cardioid billiard are studied by introducing a binary symbolic dynamics. The corresponding partition is mapped to a topological well-ordered symbol plane. In the symbol plane the pruning front is…
It is shown that the set of 4-period orbits in outer billiard with piecewise smooth convex boundary has an empty interior, provided that no four corners of the boundary form a parallelogram.