Related papers: Billiards and the Five Distance Theorem II
In this paper we are interested in the motion of a ball inside a billiard table bounded by a particular smooth curve. This table belongs to a family of billiards which can all be drawn by a common process: the so-called gardener's string…
The configuration manifold $M$ of a mechanical system consisting of two unconstrained rigid bodies in $\mathbb{R}^n$, $n\geq 1$, is a manifold with boundary (typically with singularities.) A complete description of the system requires…
In any periodic direction on the regular pentagon billiard table, there exists two combinatorially different billiard paths, with one longer than the other. For each periodic direction, McMullen asked if one could determine whether the…
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…
Given two binary trees on $N$ labeled leaves, the quartet distance between the trees is the number of disagreeing quartets. By permuting the leaves at random, the expected quartets distance between the two trees is…
Billiards tables - a minimal model for particles moving in a confined region - are known to present classical (and quantum) different features according to their shape, ranging from strongly chaotic to integrable dynamics. Here we consider…
We consider a mechanical system consisting of an infinite rod (a straight line) and a ball (a massless point) on the plane. The rod rotates uniformly around one of its points. The ball is reflected elastically when colliding with the rod…
We investigate the semiclassical energy spectrum of quantum elliptic billiard. The nearest neighbor spacing distribution, level number variance and spectral rigidity support the notion that the elliptic billiard is a generic integrable…
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…
We study length-minimizing closed generalized Euclidean billiard trajectories in convex bodies in $\mathbb{R}^n$ and investigate their relation to the inclusion minimal affine sections that contain these trajectories. We show that when…
We apply the technique of K\'aroly Bezdek and Daniel Bezdek to study billiard trajectories in convex bodies, when the length is measured with a (possibly asymmetric) norm. We prove a lower bound for the length of the shortest closed…
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…
We prove that the time of the first collision between two particles in a Sinai billiard table converges weakly to an exponential distribution when time is rescaled by the inverse of the radius of the particles. This results provides a first…
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…
The edge-of-the-wedge theorem in several complex variables gives the analytic continuation of functions defined on the poly upper half plane and the poly lower half plane, the set of points in $\mathbb{C}^d$ with all coordinates in the…
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…
A billiard is a dynamical system in which a particle alternates between motion in a straight line and specular reflection from a boundary. For billiards in non-convex areas bounded by segments of confocal quadrics are studied. The topology…
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…
Let $f: [0, +\infty) \to (0, +\infty)$ be a sufficiently smooth convex function, vanishing at infinity. Consider the planar domain $Q$ delimited by the positive $x$-semiaxis, the positive $y$-semiaxis, and the graph of $f$. Under certain…
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…