Related papers: Weak mixing directions in non-arithmetic Veech sur…

We prove that there exists a residual set of (non-rational) polygons such the billiard flow is weakly mixing with respect to the Liouville measure (on the unit tangent bundle to the billiard). This follows, via a Baire category argument,…

We consider the set of polygons all of whose sides are vertical or horizontal with fixed combinatorics (for example all the figure "L"s). We show that there is a dense G $\delta$ subset of such polygons such that for each polygon in this G…

We completely characterize rational polygons whose billiard flow is weakly mixing in almost every direction as those which are not almost integrable, in the terminology of Gutkin, modulo some low complexity exceptions. This proves a…

We show that in a typical polygon the billiard map as well as its associated subshift obtained by coding orbits by the sequence of sides they visit are topologically weakly mixing.

We prove that the return map of the unstable horocycle flow on the space of horizontally short translation surfaces associated to a lattice surface $(X, \omega)$ is weakly mixing. This extends a result of Cheung-Quas for the square torus to…

Let $(\phi_t)$ be an area-preserving smooth flow on a compact, connected, orientable surface $\mathcal M$ with at least one but finitely many fixed points. Assume that $(\phi_t)$ is analytic (up to a canonical change of coordinates) in the…

Over the course of studying billiard dynamics, several questions were raised. One of the questions was, which surfaces satisfy the following property (which is called Veech's dichotomy): Any direction is either completely periodic or…

A nice trick for studying the billiard flow in a rational polygon is to unfold the polygon along the trajectories. This gives rise to a translation or half-translation surface tiled by the original polygon, or equivalently an Abelian or…

A planar polygonal billiard $\P$ is said to have the finite blocking property if for every pair $(O,A)$ of points in $\P$ there exists a finite number of ``blocking'' points $B_1, ..., B_n$ such that every billiard trajectory from $O$ to…

We prove that any sufficiently small perturbation of an isosceles triangle has a periodic billiard path. Our proof involves the analysis of certain infinite families of Fourier series that arise in connection with triangular billiards, and…

We study the recurrence and ergodicity for the billiard on noncompact polygonal surfaces with a free, cocompact action of $\Z$ or $\Z^2$. In the $\Z$-periodic case, we establish criteria for recurrence. In the more difficult $\Z^2$-periodic…

We construct a planar smooth weakly mixing stationary random vector field with nonnegative components such that, with probability 1, the flow generated by this vector field does not have an asymptotic direction. Moreover, for all individual…

This work presents a framework for billiards in convex domains on two dimensional Riemannian manifolds. These domains are contained in connected, simply connected open subsets which are totally normal. In this context, some basic properties…

While many dynamical systems of mechanical origin, in particular billiards, are strongly chaotic -- enjoy exponential mixing, the rates of mixing in many other models are slow (algebraic, or polynomial). The dynamics in the latter are…

Since the seminal work of Sinai one studies chaotic properties of planar billiards tables. Among them is the study of decay of correlations for these tables. There are examples in the literature of tables with exponential and even…

In view of classical results of Masur and Veech almost every element in the moduli space of compact translation surfaces is recurrent. In this paper we focus on the problem of recurrence for elements of smooth curves in the moduli space. We…

In this work, we extend the celebrated result of Avila--Forni~\cite{avila2007weak} on the weak mixing property of interval exchange transformations to the setting of linear involutions, which naturally arise from the study of vertical…

Motivated by the study of billiards in polyhedra, we study linear flows in a family of singular flat $3$-manifolds which we call translation prisms. Using ideas of Furstenberg and Veech, we connect results about weak mixing properties of…

We consider classical billiards on surfaces of constant curvature, where the charged billiard ball is exposed to a homogeneous, stationary magnetic field perpendicular to the surface. We establish sufficient conditions for hyperbolicity of…

\textsc{J. Hadamard} studied the geometric properties of geodesic flows on surfaces of negative curvature, thus initiating "Symbolic Dynamics". In this article, we follow the same geometric approach to study the geodesic trajectories of…