Related papers: Billiards, Checkers, and Quadratic Reciprocity

One of the most interesting problems in the theory of Birkhoff billiards is the problem of integrability. In all known examples of integrable billiards, the billiard tables are either conics, quadrics (closed ellipsoids as well as unclosed…

We consider one-round games between a classical verifier and two provers who share entanglement. We show that when the constraints enforced by the verifier are `unique' constraints (i.e., permutations), the value of the game can be well…

This recreational mathematics article shows that the game of Snakes and Ladders is intransitive: square 69 has a winning edge over 79, which in turn beats 73, which beats 69. Analysis of the game is a nice illustration of Markov chains,…

We obtain an upper bound of the number of collisions of any billiard trajectory in a polyhedral angle in terms of the minimal eigenvalue of a positive definite matrix which characterizes the angle. Elements of the matrix are scalar products…

We present a computational scheme based on classical molecular dynamics to study chaotic billiards in static external magnetic fields. The method allows to treat arbitrary geometries and several interacting particles. We test the scheme for…

A variety of mesoscopic systems can be represented as a billiard with a random coupling to the exterior at the boundary. Examples include quantum dots with multiple leads, quantum corrals with different kinds of atoms forming the boundary,…

We study the motion of classical particles confined in a two-dimensional "nuclear" billiard whose walls undergo periodic shape oscillations according to a fixed multipolarity. The presence of a coupling term in the single particle…

Muller games are played by two players moving a token along a graph; the winner is determined by the set of vertices that occur infinitely often. The central algorithmic problem is to compute the winning regions for the players. Different…

Mathematics has been used in the exploration and enumeration of juggling patterns. In the case when we catch and throw one ball at a time the number of possible juggling patterns is well-known. When we are allowed to catch and throw any…

The main purpose of part (III) is to give explicit geodesics and billiard orbits in polysquares that exhibit time-quantitative density. In many instances, we can even establish a best possible form of time-quantitative density called…

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 consider a remarkable $C^2$-smooth billiard table introduced by Hans L.Fetter. It is obtained by the string construction from a regular hexagon for a special value of the length of the string. It was suggested as a possible…

We analyze the impact of two equal billiard balls in three ideal situations: when the balls freely slide on the plane of the billiard, when they roll without sliding and when one of them freely slides and the other rolls. In all the cases…

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…

Combinatorial games are two-player games of pure strategy where the players, usually called Left and Right, move alternately. In this paper, we introduce Cheating Robot games. These arise from simultaneous-play combinatorial games where one…

We consider the motion of a particle subjected to the constant gravitational field and scattered inelasticaly by hard boundaries which possess the shape of parabola, wedge, and hyperbola. The billiard itself performs oscillations. The…

A polygon is called rational if the angle between each pair of sides is a rational multiple of $\pi.$ The main theorem we will prove is Theorem 1: For rational polygons, periodic points of the billiard flow are dense in the phase space of…

Starting from billiard partitions which arose recently in the description of periodic trajectories of ellipsoidal billiards in $d$-dimensional Euclidean space, we introduce a new type of separable integer partition classes, called type B.…

The dynamics of three soft interacting particles on a ring is shown to correspond to the motion of one particle inside a soft triangular billiard. The dynamics inside the soft billiard depends only on the {\it masses ratio} between…

Poker is one of the most popular card games, whose rational investigation represents also one of the major challenges in several scientific areas, spanning from information theory and artificial intelligence to game theory and statistical…