Related papers: Tangent ray foliations and their associated outer …
A finite simple graph is called a 2-graph if all of its unit spheres S(x) are cyclic graphs of length 4 or larger. A 2-graph G is Eulerian if all vertex degrees of G are even. An edge refinement of a graph splits an edge (a,b) to two edges…
We construct an example of a H\"older continuous vector field on the plane which is tangent to all foliations in a continuous family of pairwise distinct $C^1$ foliations. Given any $1 \le r <\infty,$ the construction can be done in such a…
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…
The configuration manifold $M$ of a mechanical system consisting of two unconstrained rigid bodies in $\mathbb{R}^n$, $n\geq 1$, is a manifold with boundary (typically with singularities.) A complete description of the system requires…
On every compact, orientable, irreducible 3-manifold V which is toroidal or has torus boundary components we construct a contact 1-form whose Reeb vector field R does not have any contractible periodic orbits and is tangent to the boundary.…
We study bifurcations of vector fields on 2-manifolds with handles in generic one-parameter families unfolding vector fields with a separatrix loop of a hyperbolic saddle. These bifurcations can differ drastically from the analogous…
We consider the problem of minimal volume vector fields on a given Riemann surface, specialising on the case of $M^\star$, that is, the arbitrary radius 2-sphere with two antipodal points removed. We discuss the homology theory of the unit…
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 geometry of billiard orbits on rectangular billiards. A truncated billiard orbit induces a partition of the rectangle into polygons. We prove that thirteen is a sharp upper bound for the number of different areas of these…
We study dissipative polygonal outer billiards, i.e. outer billiards about convex polygons with a contractive reflection law. We prove that dissipative outer billiards about any triangle and the square are asymptotically periodic, i.e. they…
For any $N\geq 3$, we study invariant measures of the dynamics of $N$ hard spheres whose centres are constrained to lie on a line. In particular, we study the invariant submanifold $\mathcal{M}$ of the tangent bundle of the hard sphere…
Outer billiards is a simple dynamical system based on a convex planar shape. The Moser-Neumann question, first posed by B.H. Neumann around 1960, asks if there exists a planar shape for which outer billiards has an unbounded orbit. The…
In this work we completely describe the dynamics of triangle tiling billiards. In the first part of this work, we propose a geometric approach of dynamics by introducing natural foliations associated to it. In the second part, we exploit…
We give an optical physicist view of the problem of the trajectories in a polygonal billiard using only basic facts of Optics and the theory of functions of a complex variable. This approach allow us to stablish a certain correspondence…
In 1973, J. Moser proposed that his Twist Theorem could be used to show that orbits of the outer billiards map on a sufficiently smooth closed curve were always bounded. Five years later Moser asked the same question for a convex polygon.…
Here we study the behaviour of the horocyclic orbit of a vector on the unit tangent bundle of a geometrically infinite surface with variable negative curvature, when the corresponding geodesic ray is almost minimizing and the injectivity…
We introduce the spherical wedge billiard, a dynamical system consisting of a particle moving along a geodesic on a closed non-Euclidean surface of a spherical wedge. We derive the analytic form of the corresponding Poincar\'e map and find…
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…
The orbit closure of the unfolding of every rational right and isosceles triangle is computed and the asymptotic number of periodic billiard trajectories in these triangles is deduced. This follows by classifying all orbit closures of rank…
Following a recent paper by Baryshnikov and Zharnitskii, we consider outer billiards in the plane possessing invariant curves consisting of periodic orbits. We prove the existence and abundance of such tables using tools from sub-Riemannian…