Related papers: A Correspondence between Billiards and Geodesics
Billiard systems offer a simple setting to study regular and chaotic dynamics. Gravitational billiards are generalizations of these classical billiards which are amenable to both analytical and experimental investigations. Most previous…
The classical Birkhoff conjecture claims that the boundary of a strictly convex integrable billiard table is necessarily an ellipse (or a circle as a special case). In this article we prove a complete local version of this conjecture: a…
By making use of the greatest common divisor's ($gcd$) properties we can highlight some connections between playing billiard inside a unit square and the Fibonacci sequence as well as the Euclidean algorithm. In particular by defining two…
We give topological lower bounds on the number of periodic and closed trajectories in strictly convex smooth billiards. We use variational reduction admitting a finite group of symmetries and apply topological approach based on equivariant…
We show that there exists a $C^2$ open dense set of convex bodies with smooth boundary whose billiard map exhibits a non-trivial hyperbolic basic set. As a consequence billiards in generic convex bodies have positive topological entropy and…
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…
Let $T\subset \R^{m+1}$ be a strictly convex domain bounded by a smooth hypersurface $X=\partial T$. In this paper we find lower bounds on the number of billiard trajectories in $T$ which have a prescribed intial point $A\in X$, a…
In this paper we prove that a totally integrable strictly-convex symplectic billiard table, whose boundary has everywhere strictly positive curvature, must be an ellipse. The proof, inspired by the analogous result of Bialy for Birkhoff…
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,…
Given a domain or, more generally, a Riemannian manifold with boundary, a billiard is the motion of a particle when the field of force is absent. Trajectories of such a motion are geodesics inside the domain; and the particle reflects from…
This paper studies billiard models with a generalized law of reflection, the so-called projective billiards. They unify various laws, including the classical one in a Euclidean, pseudo-Euclidean or Riemannian metric. They were introduced…
In this paper we prove two asymptotic estimates for pairs of closed trajectories for open billiards similar to those established by Pollicott and Sharp for closed geodesics on negatively curved compact surfaces. The first of these estimates…
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…
Can any secrets still be shed by that much studied, uniquely integrable, Elliptic Billiard? Starting by examining the family of 3-periodic trajectories and the loci of their Triangular Centers, one obtains a beautiful and variegated gallery…
Reflection in strictly convex bounded planar billiard acts on the space of oriented lines and preserves a standard area form. A caustic is a curve $C$ whose tangent lines are reflected by the billiard to lines tangent to $C$. The famous…
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 prove that any sufficiently small perturbation of an isosceles triangle has a periodic billiard path. Our proof involves the analysis of certain infinite families of Fourier series that arise in connection with triangular billiards, and…
The billiard problem of statistical physics is considered in a new geometric approach with a symmetric phase space. The structure and topological features of typical billiard phase portrait are defined. The connection between geometric,…
Closed billiard trajectories in a polygon in the hyperbolic plane can be coded by the order in which they hit the sides of the polygon. In this paper, we consider the average length of cyclically related closed billiard trajectories in…
In this article we discuss a connection between two famous constructions in mathematics: a Cayley graph of a group and a (rational) billiard surface. For each rational billiard surface, there is a natural way to draw a Cayley graph of a…