Related papers: Protecting billiard balls from collisions
In this article we study the one-dimensional dynamics of elastic collisions of particles with positive and negative mass. We show that such systems are equivalent to billiards induced by an inner product of possibly indefinite signature, we…
We indulge in what mathematicians call frivolous activities. In Arithmetic Billiards, a ball is bouncing around in a rectangle. In Parity Checkers we place checkers on a checkerboard under certain parity constraints. Both activities turn…
We consider the billiard in the exterior of a piecewise smooth body in two-dimensional Euclidean space and show that the maximum number of directions of invisibility in such billiard is at most finite.
We review a virial-type estimate which bounds the strength of interaction for a gas of $N$ hard spheres (billiard balls) dispersing into Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^d$. This type of estimate has been known for decades in the context of…
Given a domain or, more generally, a Riemannian manifold with boundary, a billiard is the motion of a particle when the field of force is absent. Trajectories of such a motion are geodesics inside the domain; and the particle reflects from…
We show that two-dimensional billiard systems are Turing complete, in the sense that the halting of any Turing machine with a given input is equivalent to a certain bounded trajectory in this system entering a specified open set. Billiards…
This paper addresses a two-player target defense game in the $n$-dimensional Euclidean space where an attacker attempts to enter a closed convex target set while a defender strives to capture the attacker beforehand. We provide a complete…
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…
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…
In this paper the problem of estimating the number of periodical billiard trajectories is considered. The main result is the theorem on Morse theory for periodical billiard trajectories.
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…
The billiard problem concerns a point particle moving freely in a region of the horizontal plane bounded by a closed curve $\Gamma$, and reflected at each impact with $\Gamma$. The region is called a `billiard', and the reflections are…
The constrained Dirichlet boundary value problem $\ddot x=f(t,x)$, $x(0)=x(T)$, is studied in billiard spaces, where impacts occur in boundary points. Therefore we develop the research on impulsive Dirichlet problems with state-dependent…
The minimum $k$-enclosing ball problem seeks the ball with smallest radius that contains at least~$k$ of~$m$ given points in a general $n$-dimensional Euclidean space. This problem is NP-hard. We present a branch-and-bound algorithm on the…
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 consider the problem of choosing Euclidean points to maximize the sum of their weighted pairwise distances, when each point is constrained to a ball centered at the origin. We derive a dual minimization problem and show strong duality…
We discuss the propagation of kinetic energy through billiard balls fixed in place along a one-dimensional segment. The number of billiard balls is assumed to be large but finite and we assume kinetic energy propagates following the usual…
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 the concepts of rotation numbers and rotation vectors for billiard maps. Our approach is based on the birkhoff ergodic theorem. We anticipate that it will be useful, in particular, for the purpose of establishing the…
We prove a fairly general inequality that estimates the number of lattice points in a ball of positive radius in general position in a Euclidean space. The bound is uniform over lattices induced by a matrix having a bounded operator norm.