Related papers: Outer Billiards with Contraction: Regular Polygons

We examine the dynamical evolution of wave packets in a cubical billiard where three quantum numbers ($n_x,n_y,n_z$) determine its energy spectrum and consequently its dynamical behavior. We have constructed the wave packet in the cubical…

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 consider chaotic billiards in d dimensions, and study the matrix elements M_{nm} corresponding to general deformations of the boundary. We analyze the dependence of |M_{nm}|^2 on \omega = (E_n-E_m)/\hbar using semiclassical…

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.

We show that wave functions in planar rational polygonal billiards (all angles rationally related to Pi) can be expanded in a basis of quasi-stationary and spatially regular states. Unlike the energy eigenstates, these states are directly…

We present a link between billiards in convex plane domains and Hofer's geometry, an area of symplectic topology. For smooth strictly convex billiard tables, we prove that the Hofer distance between the corresponding billiard ball maps…

Consider two $k$-gons $P$ and $Q$. We say that the billiard flows in $P$ and $Q$ are homotopically equivalent if the set of conjugacy classes in the fundamental group of $P$ which contain a periodic billiard orbit agrees with the analogous…

We give a tight upper bound on the polygonal diameter of the interior, resp. exterior, of a simple $n$-gon, $n \ge 3$, in the plane as a function of $n$, and describe an $n$-gon $(n \ge 3)$ for which both upper bounds (for the interior and…

We use Ratner's theorem to compute the asymptotics of the number of (cylinders of) periodic trajectories in a rectangle with a barrier, assuming that the location p/q of the barrier is rational. We also show that as q tends to infinity, the…

We consider two nested billiards in $\mathbb R^d$, $d\geq3$, with $C^2$-smooth strictly convex boundaries. We prove that if the corresponding actions by reflections on the space of oriented lines commute, then the billiards are confocal…

We provide explicit lower estimates on the complexity growth in typical directions for a class of irrational triangle billiards

Recent experiments have shown that many species of microorganisms leave a solid surface at a fixed angle determined by steric interactions and near-field hydrodynamics. This angle is completely independent of the incoming angle. For several…

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…

We consider billiard trajectories in a smooth convex body in $\mathbb R^d$ and estimate the number of distinct periodic trajectories that make exactly $p$ reflections per period at the boundary of the body. In the case of prime $p$ we…

We study pinball billiard dynamics in an equilateral triangular table. In such dynamics, collisions with the walls are non-elastic: the outgoing angle with the normal vector to the boundary is a uniform factor $\lambda < 1$ smaller than the…

We prove polynomial upper bounds for the deviation of ergodic averages for the straight line flow on every translation surface in almost every direction, in particular for those surfaces arising from rational polygonal billiards.

We show that there exists a $C^2$ open dense set of convex bodies with smooth boundary whose billiard map exhibits a non-trivial hyperbolic basic set. As a consequence billiards in generic convex bodies have positive topological entropy and…

We propose geometric tools that are suitable for studying the behavior of a billiard trajectory in a homogeneous force field. Two examples are considered: a vertical plane with an open top and with a parabolic or right angle boundary at the…

Consider a strictly convex set $\Omega$ in the plane, and a homogeneous, stationary magnetic field orthogonal to the plane whose strength is $B$ on the complement of $\Omega$ and $0$ inside $\Omega$. The trajectories of a charged particle…

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…