Related papers: On the Local Theory of Billiards in Polygons
We consider the billiard map inside a polyhedron. We give a condition for the stability of the periodic trajectories. We apply this result to the case of the tetrahedron. We deduce the existence of an open set of tetrahedra which have a…
Mathematical billiards is much like the real game: a point mass, representing the ball, rolls in a straight line on a (perfectly friction-less) table, striking the sides according to the law of reflection. A billiard trajectory is then…
We introduce a new notion of stability for periodic orbits in polygonal billiards. We say that a periodic orbit of a polygonal billiard is $\lambda$-stable if there is a periodic orbit for the corresponding pinball billiard which converges…
We prove that if a polygon admits a periodic billiard orbit satisfying a certain combinatorial criterion, then there are paths of polygons in parameter space for which every polygon in the path admits a periodic billiard orbit of the same…
In this paper we define and study the billiard problem on bounded regions on surfaces of constant curvature. We show that this problem defines a 2-dimensional conservative and reversible dynamical system, defined by a Twist diffeomorphism,…
Any periodic trajectory on an isosceles triangle gives rise to a periodic trajectory on a right triangle obtained by identifying the halves of the original triangle. We examine the relationship between periodic trajectories on isosceles…
We give an optical physicist view of the problem of the trajectories in a polygonal billiard using only basic facts of Optics and the theory of functions of a complex variable. This approach allow us to stablish a certain correspondence…
A polygon is called rational if the angle between each pair of sides is a rational multiple of $\pi.$ The main theorem we will prove is Theorem 1: For rational polygons, periodic points of the billiard flow are dense in the phase space of…
We give lower bound on the number of periodic billiard trajectories inside a generic smooth strictly convex closed surface in 3-space: for odd n, there are at least 2(n-1) such trajectories. We apply a topological approach based on the…
An annular billiard is a dynamical system in which a particle moves freely in a disk except for elastic collisions with the boundary, and also a circular scatterer in the interior of the disk. We investigate stability properties of some…
We introduce a class of convex, higher-dimensional billiard models which generalise stadium billiards. These models correspond to the free motion of a point-particle in a region bounded by cylinders cut by planes. They are motivated by…
It is known that at lemon and moon billiards that have a sufficiently small curvature on one of their circular arcs are hyperbolic. In this paper we show that replacing this circular arc by a more general boundary component of small…
Rigid bodies collision maps in dimension two, under a natural set of physical requirements, can be classified into two types: the standard specular reflection map and a second which we call, after Broomhead and Gutkin, no-slip. This leads…
A general formula for the linearized Poincar\'e map of a billiard with a potential is derived. The stability of periodic orbits is given by the trace of a product of matrices describing the piecewise free motion between reflections and the…
A periodic orbit on a frictionless billiard table is a piecewise linear path of a billiard ball that begins and ends at the same point with the same angle of incidence. The period of a primitive periodic orbit is the number of times the…
Building on tools that have been successfully used in the study of rational billiards, such as induced maps and interval exchange transformations, we provide a construction of a one-parameter family of isosceles triangles exhibiting…
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…
In this work, we construct linearly stable periodic orbits in $3$-dimensional domains with boundaries containing focusing components (small pieces of a sphere) where we place these components arbitrarily far apart. It demonstrates that we…
We present numerical and experimental results for the development of islands of stability in atom-optics billiards with soft walls. As the walls are soften, stable regions appear near singular periodic trajectories in converging (focusing)…
Dynamical billiards, or the behavior of a particle traveling in a planar region $D$ undergoing elastic collisions with the boundary, has been extensively studied and is used to model many physical phenomena such as a Boltzmann gas. Of…