Related papers: On pinned billiard balls and foldings
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…
We study a simple model of a bouncing ball that takes explicitely into account the elastic deformability of the body and the energy dissipation due to internal friction. We show that this model is not subject to the problem of inelastic…
Control of a hybrid dynamical system can manifest in one of two main ways: either through the continuous or the discrete dynamics. An example of controls influencing the continuous dynamics is legged locomotion, where the joints are…
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 prove Poisson limit laws for open billiards where the holes are on the boundaries of billiard tables (rather than some abstract holes in the phase space of a billiard). Such holes are of the main interest for billiard systems, especially…
We present an open problem about non-colliding freely moving hard disks in the Euclidean plane, together with related positive and negative partial results. The open problem is stated in a non-degenerate form: velocities are required to be…
We prove by example that the number of elastic collisions of $n$ balls of equal mass and equal size in $d$-dimensional space can be greater than $n^3/27$ for $n\geq 3$ and $d\geq 2$. The previously known lower bound was of order $n^2$.
We study the dynamics of three elastic particles in a finite interval where two light particles are separated by a heavy ``piston''. The piston undergoes surprisingly complex motion that is oscillatory at short time scales but seemingly…
Nonlinear dynamics of a bouncing ball moving vertically in a gravitational field and colliding with a moving limiter is considered and the Poincare map, describing evolution from an impact to the next impact, is described. Displacement of…
Statistical properties for the recurrence of particles in an oval billiard with a hole in the boundary are discussed. The hole is allowed to move in the boundary under two different types of motion: (i) counterclockwise periodic circulation…
A billiard is a dynamical system in which a particle alternates between motion in a straight line and specular reflection from a boundary. For billiards in non-convex areas bounded by segments of confocal quadrics are studied. The topology…
In this survey, we discuss volumetric and combinatorial results concerning (mostly finite) intersections or unions of balls (mostly of equal radii) in the $d$-dimensional real vector space, mostly equipped with the Euclidean norm. Our first…
Inspired by the Japanese game Pachinko, we study simple (perfectly "inelastic" collisions) dynamics of a unit ball falling amidst point obstacles (pins) in the plane. A classic example is that a checkerboard grid of pins produces the…
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…
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…
We study stochastic billiards on general tables: a particle moves according to its constant velocity inside some domain ${\mathcal D} \subset {\mathbb R}^d$ until it hits the boundary and bounces randomly inside according to some reflection…
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;…
The standard Wojtkowski-Markarian-Donnay-Bunimovich technique for the hyperbolicity of focusing or mixed billiards in the plane requires the diameter of a billiard table to be of the same order as the largest ray of curvature along the…
We propose a model of Sinai billiards with moving scatterers, in which the locations and shapes of the scatterers may change by small amounts between collisions. Our main result is the exponential loss of memory of initial data at uniform…
We prove a sharp bound for the remainder term of the number of lattice points inside a ball, when averaging over a compact set of (not necessarily unimodular) lattices, in dimensions two and three. We also prove that such a bound cannot…