English

Bridge to Hyperbolic Polygonal Billiards

Dynamical Systems 2020-08-13 v1

Abstract

It is well-known that billiards in polygons cannot be chaotic (hyperbolic). Particularly Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy of any polygonal billiard is zero. We consider physical polygonal billiards where a moving particle is a hard disc rather than a point (mathematical) particle and show that typical physical polygonal billiard is hyperbolic at least on a subset of positive measure and therefore has a positive Kolmogorov- Sinai entropy for any positive radius of the moving particle (provided that the particle is not so big that it cannot move within a polygon). This happens because a typical physical polygonal billiard is equivalent to a mathematical (point particle) semi-dispersing billiard. We also conjecture that in fact typical physical billiard in polygon is ergodic under the same conditions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2008.05389,
  title  = {Bridge to Hyperbolic Polygonal Billiards},
  author = {Hassan Attarchi and Leonid A. Bunimovich},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.05389},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

9 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:48:38.425Z