Related papers: Microorganism billiards in closed plane curves
Recent experiments and numerical simulations have shown that certain types of microorganisms "reflect" off of a flat surface at a critical angle of departure, independent of the angle of incidence. The nature of the reflection may be active…
Billiard systems, broadly speaking, may be regarded as models of mechanical systems in which rigid parts interact through elastic impulsive (collision) forces. When it is desired or necessary to account for linear/angular momentum exchange…
We study the dynamics of one-particle and few-particle billiard systems in containers of various shapes. In few-particle systems, the particles collide elastically both against the boundary and against each other. In the one-particle case,…
We define a new class of plane billiards - the `pensive billiard' - in which the billiard ball travels along the boundary for some distance depending on the incidence angle before reflecting, while preserving the billiard rule of equality…
Optical mushroom shaped billiards offer a unique opportunity to isolate and study non-dispersive, marginally unstable periodic orbits. Here we show that the openness of the cavity to external fields presents unanticipated consequences for…
Astute variations in the geometry of mathematical billiard tables have been and continue to be a source of understanding their wide range of dynamical behaviors, from regular to chaotic. Viewing standard specular billiards in the broader…
A variety of mesoscopic systems can be represented as a billiard with a random coupling to the exterior at the boundary. Examples include quantum dots with multiple leads, quantum corrals with different kinds of atoms forming the boundary,…
We present a computational scheme based on classical molecular dynamics to study chaotic billiards in static external magnetic fields. The method allows to treat arbitrary geometries and several interacting particles. We test the scheme for…
Rounding border effects at the escape point of open integrable billiards are analyzed via the escape times statistics and emission angles. The model is the rectangular billiard and the shape of the escape point is assumed to have a…
We introduce a new class of billiard-like system, ``bouncing outer billiards" which are 3-dimensional cousins of outer billiards of Neumann and Moser. We prove that bouncing outer billiard on a smooth convex body has at least four…
We investigate mushroom billiards, a class of dynamical systems with sharply divided phase space. For typical values of the control parameter of the system $\rho$, an infinite number of marginally unstable periodic orbits (MUPOs) exist…
We discuss the interplay between the piece-line regular and vertex-angle singular boundary effects, related to integrability and chaotic features in rational polygonal billiards. The approach to controversial issue of regular and irregular…
Billiards tables - a minimal model for particles moving in a confined region - are known to present classical (and quantum) different features according to their shape, ranging from strongly chaotic to integrable dynamics. Here we consider…
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…
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…
A class of non-compact billiards is introduced, namely the infinite step billiards, i.e., systems of a point particle moving freely in the domain $\Omega = \bigcup_{n\in\N} [n,n+1] \times [0,p_n]$, with elastic reflections on the boundary;…
We consider classical dynamical properties of a particle in a constant gravitational force and making specular reflections with circular, elliptic or oval boundaries. The model and collision map are described and a detailed study of the…
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…
A simple relation is developed between elastic collisions of freely-moving point particles in one dimension and a corresponding billiard system. For two particles with masses m_1 and m_2 on the half-line x>0 that approach an elastic barrier…
Systems of pinned billiard balls serve as simplified models of collisions, where all particles remain fixed in their positions while their (pseudo-)velocities evolve in accordance with the laws of conservation of energy and momentum. For…