Related papers: Periodic orbits for square and rectangular billiar…
In an ordinary billiard system trajectories of a Hamiltonian system are elastically reflected after a collision with a hypersurface (scatterer). If the scatterer is a submanifold of codimension more than one, we say that the billiard is…
A simple relation is developed between elastic collisions of freely-moving point particles in one dimension and a corresponding billiard system. For two particles with masses m_1 and m_2 on the half-line x>0 that approach an elastic barrier…
In this paper the problem of estimating the number of periodical billiard trajectories is considered. The main result is the theorem on Morse theory for periodical billiard trajectories.
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…
We study the stability of periodic trajectories of planar inverse magnetic billiards, a dynamical system whose trajectories are straight lines inside a connected planar domain $\Omega$ and circular arcs outside $\Omega$. Explicit examples…
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…
We classify the periodic digit strings which arise from periodic billiard orbits on the four convex $n$-gons $\Delta$ which tile $\mathbb{R}^2$ under reflection, answering problem a posed by Baxter and Umble. $\Delta$ is either an…
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…
Motivated by the high-energy limit of the $N$-body problem we construct non-deterministic billiard process. The billiard table is the complement of a finite collection of linear subspaces within a Euclidean vector space. A trajectory is a…
In this article we study the dynamics of one-dimensional relativistic billiards containing particles with positive and negative energy. We study configurations with two identical positive masses and symmetric positions with two massless…
We discuss a recent result by C. Culter: every polygonal outer billiard has a periodic trajectory.
We investigate a rotated, orthogonal gravitational wedge billiard - a special case of the asymmetric wedge billiard - in which the dynamics are integrable. We derive equations and conditions under which periodic orbits may be constructed…
We give lower bound on the number of periodic billiard trajectories inside a generic smooth strictly convex closed surface in 3-space: for odd n, there are at least 2(n-1) such trajectories. We apply a topological approach based on the…
Dynamical billiards, or the behavior of a particle traveling in a planar region $D$ undergoing elastic collisions with the boundary, has been extensively studied and is used to model many physical phenomena such as a Boltzmann gas. Of…
In this paper we show that, under certain generic conditions, billiards on ovals have only a finite number of periodic orbits, for each period, all non-degenerate and at least one of them is hyperbolic. Moreover, the invariant curves of two…
Numerical computations suggest that each point on a certain optimized shape called the ideal trefoil is in contact with two other points. We consider sequences of such contact points, such that each point is in contact with its predecessor…
The goal of this paper is an analysis of the geometry of billiards in ellipses, based on properties of confocal central conics. The extended sides of the billiards meet at points which are located on confocal ellipses and hyperbolas. They…
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…
The existence of an aperiodic orbit for an outer billiard outside a regular octagon is proved. Additionally, almost all orbits of such an outer billiard are proved to be periodic. All possible periods are explicitly listed.
We define billiards in the context of sub-Finsler Geometry. We provide symplectic and variational (or rather, control theoretical) descriptions of the problem and show that they coincide. We then discuss several phenomena in this setting,…