Related papers: Flat Surfaces with Finite Holonomy Groups

We study the geodesic flow of geometrically finite quotients $\Omega/{\Gamma}$ of Hilbert geometries, in particular its recurrence properties. We prove that, under a geometrical assumption on the cusps, the geodesic flow is uniformly…

Since their introduction by Thurston, geodesic laminations on hyperbolic surfaces occur in many contexts. In this paper, we propose a generalization of geodesic laminations on locally CAT(0), complete, geodesic metric spaces, whose boundary…

In a previous paper (nlin.CD/0107041) the following class of billiards was studied: For $f: [0, +\infty) \longrightarrow (0, +\infty)$ convex, sufficiently smooth, and vanishing at infinity, let the billiard table be defined by $Q$, the…

We prove several results concerning the existence of surfaces of section for the geodesic flows of closed orientable Riemannian surfaces. The surfaces of section $\Sigma$ that we construct are either Birkhoff sections, meaning that they…

Various problems of geometry, topology and dynamical systems on surfaces as well as some questions concerning one-dimensional dynamical systems lead to the study of closed surfaces endowed with a flat metric with several cone-type…

Given a smooth compact surface without focal points and of higher genus, it is shown that its geodesic flow is semi-conjugate to a continuous expansive flow with a local product structure such that the semi-conjugation preserves…

We give completely combinatorial proofs of the main results of [3] using polygons. Namely, we prove that the mapping class group of a surface with boundary acts faithfully on a finitely-generated linear category. Along the way we prove some…

From a geometric viewpoint, billiard trajectories and geodesics are related by mutual approximation results. In one direction, it is known that every geodesic curve in the boundary of a smooth convex body can be approximated by a sequence…

We prove that an analogue of Jordan's theorem on finite subgroups of general linear groups holds for the groups of biregular automorphisms of elliptic ruled surfaces. This gives a positive answer to a question of Vladimir L. Popov.

In this paper we study the behavior of geodesics on cones over arbitrary $C^3$-smooth closed Riemannian manifolds. We show that the geodesic flow on such cones admits first integrals whose values uniquely determine almost all geodesics…

Motivated by the study of billiards in polyhedra, we study linear flows in a family of singular flat $3$-manifolds which we call translation prisms. Using ideas of Furstenberg and Veech, we connect results about weak mixing properties of…

In this paper we describe the topological behavior of the geodesic flow for a class of closed 3-manifolds realized as quotients of nonstrictly convex Hilbert geometries, constructed and described explicitly by Benoist. These manifolds are…

In this paper, we study the ergodicity of a one-parameter diagonalizable subgroup of a connected semisimple real algebraic group $G$ acting on a homogeneous space or, more generally, a homogeneous-like space, equipped with a…

We borrow a classical construction from the study of rational billiards in dynamical systems known as the "unfolding construction" and show that it can be used to study the automorphism group of a Platonic surface. More precisely, the…

In this article we investigate the dynamical properties of the geodesic flow for a proper metric space endowed with a proper action by isometries of a group with a contracting element. We show that the existence of a contracting isometry is…

We study the ergodic properties of horospheres on rank 1 manifolds with non-positive curvature. We prove that the horospheres are equidistributed under the action of the geodesic flow towards the Bowen-Margulis measure, on a large class of…

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…

We consider a geodesic billiard system consisting of a complete Riemannian manifold and an obstacle submanifold with boundary at which the trajectories of the geodesic flow experience specular reflections. We show that if the geodesic…

We give a sufficient condition under which the fundamental group of a reglued graph of surfaces is hyperbolic. A reglued graph of surfaces is constructed by cutting a fixed graph of surfaces along the edge surfaces, then regluing by…

In this paper we investigate some generic properties of a billiard system on a convex table. We show that generically, every hyperbolic periodic point admits some homoclinic orbit.