Related papers: Bodies with mirror surface invisible from two poin…
Let $T\subset \R^{m+1}$ be a strictly convex domain bounded by a smooth hypersurface $X=\partial T$. In this paper we find lower bounds on the number of billiard trajectories in $T$ which have a prescribed intial point $A\in X$, a…
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…
A mirror that reflects light fully and yet is transparent appears paradoxical. Current so-called transparent or "one-way" mirrors are not perfectly reflective and thus can be distinguished from a standard mirror. Constructing a transparent…
The concept of viewing graph solvability has gained significant interest in the context of structure-from-motion. A viewing graph is a mathematical structure where nodes are associated to cameras and edges represent the epipolar geometry…
In the current article we discuss an illumination problem proposed by Urrutia and Zaks. The focus is on configurations of finitely many two-sided mirrors in the plane together with a source of light placed at an arbitrary point. In this…
We consider a bimodal light field envelope propagating in a bulk medium characterized by competing cubic and quintic nonlinearities. The subfields are coupled by a cross-phase modulation term and experience effective attraction. We find…
We introduce ideas from geometric group theory related to boundaries of groups. This is a mostly expository paper. We consider the visual boundary of a free abelian group, and show that it is an uncountable set with the trivial topology.
Concave mirrors are fundamental optical elements, yet some easily observed behaviors are rarely addressed in standard textbooks, such as the formation of multiple reflected images. Here we investigate self-imaging -- where the observer is…
We study outer billiard systems around a class of circular sectors. For semi-discs, we prove the existence of elliptic islands occupying a positive proportion of the plane. Combined with known results, this shows the coexistence of…
We consider the free motion of a point particle inside a circular billiard with periodically moving boundary, with the assumption that the collisions of the particle with the boundary are elastic so that the energy of the particle is not…
A correspondence between the orbits of a system of 2 complex, homogeneous, polynomial ordinary differential equations with real coefficients and those of a polygonal billiard is displayed. This correspondence is general, in the sense that…
We introduce the notion of a Billiard Array. This is an equilateral triangular array of one-dimensional subspaces of a vector space $V$, subject to several conditions that specify which sums are direct. We show that the Billiard Arrays on…
There are several well-known characterizations of the sphere as a regular surface in the Euclidean space. By means of a purely synthetic technique, we get a rigidity result for the sphere without any curvature conditions, nor completeness…
In this work, we introduce a novel concept of magic billiards, which can be seen as an umbrella, unifying several well-known generalisations of mathematical billiards. We analyse properties of magic billiards in the case of elliptical…
We establish a connection between capillary floating in neutral equilibrium and the billiard ball problem. This allows us to reduce the question of floating in neutral equilibrium at any orientation with a prescribed contact angle for…
Uniform hyperbolicity is a strong chaotic property which holds, in particular, for Sinai billiards. In this paper, we consider the case of a nonflat billiard, that is, a Riemannian manifold with boundary. Each trajectory follows the…
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,…
In his classical work, W. Blaschke proved that a convex body whose shadow boundaries are flat for every direction of parallel illumination must be an ellipsoid. An extension recently proposed by I. Gonzalez-Garc\'ia, J. Jer\'onimo-Castro,…
We introduce a new dynamical system that we call "tiling billiards," where trajectories refract through planar tilings. This system is motivated by a recent discovery of physical substances with negative indices of refraction. We…
Geometrical chirality is a property of objects that describes three-dimensional mirror-symmetry violation and therefore it requires a non-vanishing spatial extent. In contrary, optical chirality describes only the local handedness of…