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We establish sufficient conditions for the hyperbolicity of the billiard dynamics on surfaces of constant curvature. This extends known results for planar billiards. Using these conditions, we construct large classes of billiard tables with…
We examine the possible trajectories of a classical particle, trapped in a two-dimensional infinite rectangular well, using the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. We observe that three types of trajectories are possible: periodic orbits, open orbits…
In this paper we define and study the billiard problem on bounded regions on surfaces of constant curvature. We show that this problem defines a 2-dimensional conservative and reversible dynamical system, defined by a Twist diffeomorphism,…
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…
A simplex is the convex hull of $n+1$ points in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$ which form an affine basis. A regular simplex $\Delta^n$ is a simplex with sides of the same length. We consider the billiard flow inside a regular simplex of $\mathbb{R}^n$.…
It is known that at lemon and moon billiards that have a sufficiently small curvature on one of their circular arcs are hyperbolic. In this paper we show that replacing this circular arc by a more general boundary component of small…
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…
We provide lower bounds on the number of periodic Finsler billiard trajectories inside a quadratically convex smooth closed hypersurface $M$ in a $d$-dimensional Finsler space with possibly irreversible Finsler metric. An example of such a…
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 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…
Mathematical billiards is much like the real game: a point mass, representing the ball, rolls in a straight line on a (perfectly friction-less) table, striking the sides according to the law of reflection. A billiard trajectory is then…
We study the classical motion in bidimensional polygonal billiards on the sphere. In particular we investigate the dynamics in tiling and generic rational and irrational equilateral triangles. Unlike the plane or the negative curvature…
We prove that there exists a residual set of (non-rational) polygons such the billiard flow is weakly mixing with respect to the Liouville measure (on the unit tangent bundle to the billiard). This follows, via a Baire category argument,…
We study the set of combinatorial lengths of asymmetric periodic trajectories on the regular pentagon, proving a density-one version of a conjecture of Davis-Lelievre.
Certain topics on polygons are extended from Euclidean to hyperbolic geometry. This first part deals with uniqueness and existence of cocyclic polygons with prescribed sidelengths. The non-Euclidean versions are more difficult due to the…
Euclidean outer billiard on a regular polygon (that is not a triangle, square or a hexagon) has aperiodic points, i.e., points where all iterates of the outer billiard map are defined and yield pairwise distinct images. This result answers…
A nice trick for studying the billiard flow in a rational polygon is to unfold the polygon along the trajectories. This gives rise to a translation or half-translation surface tiled by the original polygon, or equivalently an Abelian or…
We show that the complexity of the billiard in a typical polygon grows cubically and the number of saddle connections grows quadratically along certain subsequences. It is known that the set of points whose first n-bounces hits the same…
In this paper we study the dynamical billiards on a convex 2D sphere. We investigate some generic properties of the convex billiards on a general convex sphere. We prove that $C^\infty$ generically, every periodic point is either hyperbolic…
We study polygonal billiards with reflection laws contracting the reflected angle towards the normal. It is shown that if a polygon does not have parallel sides facing each other, then the corresponding billiard map has finitely many…