Related papers: Polygonal billiards and "optical tori"

We give a new proof for the directional billiard complexity in the cube, which was conjectured in \cite{Ra} and proven in \cite{Ar.Ma.Sh.Ta}. Our technique gives us a similar theorem for some rational polyhedra.

Recently were introduced physical billiards where a moving particle is a hard sphere rather than a point as in standard mathematical billiards. It has been shown that in the same billiard tables the physical billiards may have totally…

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…

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…

The connected configuration space of a so called cylindric billiard system is a flat torus minus finitely many spherical cylinders. The dynamical system describes the uniform motion of a point particle in this configuration space with…

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…

The article studies a generalization of the elliptic billiard to the complex domain. We show that the billiard orbits also have caustics, and that the number of such caustics is bigger than for the real case. For example, for a given…

We derive Cayley's type conditions for periodical trajectories for the billiard within an ellipsoid in the Lobachevsky space. It appears that these new conditions are of the same form as those obtained before for the Euclidean case. We…

We demonstrate that the free motion of any two-dimensional rigid body colliding elastically with two parallel, flat walls is equivalent to a billiard system. Using this equivalence, we analyze the integrable and chaotic properties of this…

I announce a solution of the conjecture about the measure of periodic points for planar billiard tables. The theorem says that if $\Om\subset\R^2$ is a compact domain with piecewise $C^3$ boundary, then the set of periodic orbits for the…

The classical inner and outer billiards can be formulated in variational terms, with length and area as the respective generating functions. The other two combinations, ``inner with area'' and ``outer with length,'' are more recently…

The paper establishes the property of splittability of billiard boundary sequences in n dimensional cube into subsequences of fractional parts. This reveals a new property of integrable and weak perturbated Hamilton systems: under a simple…

Following a recent paper by Baryshnikov and Zharnitskii, we consider outer billiards in the plane possessing invariant curves consisting of periodic orbits. We prove the existence and abundance of such tables using tools from sub-Riemannian…

We study outer length billiards; our main results are as follows. We prove 3- and 4-periodic versions of the Ivrii conjecture. We show that, for every period $n\ge 3$, there exists a functional space of billiard tables that possess…

We introduce the spherical wedge billiard, a dynamical system consisting of a particle moving along a geodesic on a closed non-Euclidean surface of a spherical wedge. We derive the analytic form of the corresponding Poincar\'e map and find…

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…

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…

We introduce the class of piecewise convex transformations, and study their complexity. We apply the results to the complexity of polygonal billiards on surfaces of constant curvature.

A billiard in the form of a stadium with periodically perturbed boundary is considered. Two types of such billiards are studied: stadium with strong chaotic properties and a near-rectangle billiard. Phase portraits of such billiards are…

We show that for almost every $(P,\lambda)$ where $P$ is a convex polygon and $\lambda\in(0,1)$, the corresponding outer billiard about $P$ with contraction $\lambda$ is asymptotically periodic, i.e., has a finite number of periodic orbits…