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The article studies a generalization of the elliptic billiard to the complex domain. We show that the billiard orbits also have caustics, and that the number of such caustics is bigger than for the real case. For example, for a given…
We recall the notion of Jacobi fields, as it was extended to systems of second-order ordinary differential equations. Two points along a base integral curve are conjugate if there exists a non-trivial Jacobi field along that curve that…
Given a Lagrangian submanifold in linear symplectic space, its tangent sweep is the union of its (affine) tangent spaces, and its tangent cluster is the result of parallel translating these spaces so that the foot point of each tangent…
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…
Let $M_{\kappa }$ be the three-dimensional space form of constant curvature $\kappa =0,1,-1$, that is, Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^{3}$, the sphere $S^{3} $, or hyperbolic space $H^{3}$. Let $S$ be a smooth, closed, strictly convex surface…
Defocusing mechanism provides a way to construct chaotic (hyperbolic) billiards with focusing components by separating all regular components of the boundary of a billiard table sufficiently far away from each focusing component. If all…
We establish a relationship between the word complexity and the number of generalized diagonals for a polygonal billiard. We conclude that in the rational case the complexity function has cubic upper and lower bounds. In the tiling case the…
We give a complete characterization of the relationship between the shape of a Euclidean polygon and the symbolic dynamics of its billiard flow. We prove that the only pairs of tables that can have the same bounce spectrum are right-angled…
We show that in a typical polygon the billiard map as well as its associated subshift obtained by coding orbits by the sequence of sides they visit are topologically weakly mixing.
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 investigate the regularity of invariant curves of rotation number $1/2$ for a special class of symplectic twist maps of the annulus, billiard maps. We construct strictly convex smooth tables close to the circle having singular (i.e. not…
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…
In this article we explain that several integrable mechanical billiards in the plane are connected via conformal transformations. We first remark that the free billiard in the plane are conformal equivalent to infinitely many billiard…
The notion of a Radon transform is introduced for completely integrable billiard tables. In the case of Liouville billiard tables of dimension 3 we prove that the Radon transform is one-to-one on the space of continuous functions $K$ on the…
Since the seminal work of Sinai one studies chaotic properties of planar billiards tables. Among them is the study of decay of correlations for these tables. There are examples in the literature of tables with exponential and even…
We consider algebraic geometrical properties of the integrable billiard on a quadric Q with elastic impacts along another quadric confocal to Q. These properties are in sharp contrast with those of the ellipsoidal Birkhoff billiards.…
We establish a connection between capillary floating in neutral equilibrium and the billiard ball problem. This allows us to reduce the question of floating in neutral equilibrium at any orientation with a prescribed contact angle for…
In this note we apply the billiard technique to deduce some results on Viterbo's conjectured inequality between volume of a convex body and its symplectic capacity. We show that the product of a permutohedron and a simplex (properly related…
L. Boltzmann proposed a billiard model with a planar central force problem reflected against a line not passing through the center. He asserted that such a system is ergodic, which thus illustrates his ergodic hypothesis. However, it has…
For a given rotation number we compute the Hausdorff dimension of the set of well approximable numbers. We use this result and an inhomogeneous version of Jarnik's theorem to show strong recurrence properties of the billiard flow in certain…