Related papers: Billiards, Checkers, and Quadratic Reciprocity
The locker puzzle is a game played by multiple players against a referee. It has been previously shown that the best strategy that exists cannot succeed with probability greater than 1-ln2 \approx 0.31, no matter how many players are…
We introduce a one-person game that we call Padlock Solitaire which resembles the well-known clock solitaire card game. Analyzing variants of this game we obtain simple proofs of some classical results of combinatorics including ballot…
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 show that, by using multiplicative weights in a game-theoretic thought experiment (and an important convexity result on the composition of multiplicative weights with the relative entropy function), a symmetric bimatrix game (that is, a…
Billiards in ellipses have a confocal ellipse or hyperbola as caustic. The goal of this paper is to prove that for each billiard of one type there exists an isometric counterpart of the other type. Isometry means here that the lengths of…
This paper explores the number of parallelograms that appear in a billiard path that enters one corner of a rectangle and leaves a second corner of a rectangle as a function of the normalized dimensions of the rectangle.
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…
A comparison of escape rates from one and from two holes in an experimental container (e.g. a laser trap) can be used to obtain information about the dynamics inside the container. If this dynamics is simple enough one can hope to obtain…
The aim of the paper is to unify the efforts in the study of integrable billiards within quadrics in flat and curved spaces and to explore further the interplay of symplectic and contact integrability. As a starting point in this direction,…
We study the dynamics of billiard models with a modified collision rule: the outgoing angle from a collision is a uniform contraction, by a factor lambda, of the incident angle. These pinball billiards interpolate between a one-dimensional…
We illustrate the theory of one-dimensional pluri-Lagrangian systems with the example of commuting billiard maps in confocal quadrics.
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…
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…
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 general formula for the linearized Poincar\'e map of a billiard with a potential is derived. The stability of periodic orbits is given by the trace of a product of matrices describing the piecewise free motion between reflections and the…
Integrability of a square billiard is spontaneously broken as it rotates about one of its corners. The system becomes quasi-integrable where the invariant tori are broken with respect to a certain parameter, $\lambda = 2E/\omega^{2}$ where…
The barrier billiard is the simplest example of pseudo-integrable models with interesting and intricate classical and quantum properties. Using the Wiener-Hopf method it is demonstrated that quantum mechanics of a rectangular billiard with…
The present work consists of a numerical study of the dynamics of irrational polygonal billiards. Our contribution reinforces the hypothesis that these systems could be Strongly Mixing, although never demonstrably chaotic, and discuss the…
We introduce a two-player game in which one and his/her opponent attempt to pack as many ``prisoners'' as possible on the squares of an n-by-n checkerboard; each prisoner has to be ``protected'' by at least as many guards as the number of…
We introduce a new equivalence relation on the set of all polygonal billiards. We say that two billiards (or polygons) are order equivalent if each of the billiards has an orbit whose footpoints are dense in the boundary and the two…