Related papers: Chess Billiards
Using modular arithmetic of the ring $\mathbb{Z}_{n+1}$ we obtain a new short solution to the problem of existence of at least one solution to the $N$-Queens problem on an $N \times N$ chessboard. It was proved, that these solutions can be…
We study the problem of arithmetic billiards from a new perspective. We first raise a similar problem about reflecting lights inside grids. For the solution to this problem, we will give three proofs. Next, we consider a similar problem in…
We introduce QUEENS, a derivative chess problem based on the classical n-queens problem. We prove that QUEENS is NP-complete, with respect to polynomial-time reductions.
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…
In this paper we consider the coin billiard introduced by M. Bialy. It is a modification of the classical billiard, obtained as the return map of a nonsmooth geodesic flow on a cylinder that has homeomorphic copies of a classical billiard…
Wire billiard is defined by a smooth embedded closed curve of non-vanishing curvature $k$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$ (a wire). For a class of curves, that we call nice wires, the wire billiard map is area preserving twist map of the cylinder. In…
We prove some partial results on the periodicity of billiard systems on graphs. The results specialize to the case of $n$ billiards with equal mass on the unit interval or circle traveling at the same speed.
In this paper we establish a kind of bijection between the orbits of a polygonal outer billiards system and the orbits of a related (and simpler to analyze) system called the pinwheel map. One consequence of the result is that the outer…
We introduce a geometric dynamical system where iteration is defined as a cycling composition of different maps acting on a space composed of three or more lines in $\mathbb{R}^2$. This system is motivated by the dynamics of iterated…
A hard-wall billiard is a mathematical model describing the confinement of a free particle that collides specularly and instantaneously with boundaries and discontinuities. Soft billiards are a generalization that includes a smooth boundary…
We generalize the recent results of Chaiken et al. to a rectangular $m\times n$ chessboard. An explicit formula for the number of nonattacking configurations of one-move riders on such a chessboard is calculated in two different ways, one…
We consider a random billiard map, the one in which the standard specular reflection rule is replaced by a random reflection given by a Markov operator. We exhibit an invariant measure for random billiards on general tables. In the special…
In this paper, we show that the solution to a large class of "tiling" problems is given by a polynomial sequence of binomial type. More specifically, we show that the number of ways to place a fixed set of polyominos on an $n\times n$…
We present some foundational results about the outer length billiard system, including its generating function and the invariant area form. We describe the limiting behavior of the orbits far away from the billiard table: the orbits of the…
By means of the Ehrhart theory of inside-out polytopes we establish a general counting theory for nonattacking placements of chess pieces with unbounded straight-line moves, such as the queen, on a polygonal convex board. The number of ways…
In this paper we study queen's graphs, which encode the moves by a queen on an $n\times m$ chess board, through the lens of chip-firing games. We prove that their gonality is equal to $nm$ minus the independence number of the graph, and…
Sufficiently differentiable oval billiards always have invariant rotational curves, but there are only two types of ovals with an invariant horizontal circle in its phase-space: the constant width ovals and some very special symmetric…
We introduce a two player game on an n x n chessboard where queens are placed by alternating turns on a chessboard square whose availability is determined by the number of queens already on the board which can attack that square modulo two.…
We illustrate the theory of one-dimensional pluri-Lagrangian systems with the example of commuting billiard maps in confocal quadrics.
The conjugation problem for billiard maps conjectures that if two strictly convex billiards have conjugated billiard maps, the billiard tables must be homothetic to each other. We show that if two billiard maps are conjugated, the…