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 complexity has cubic asymptotic growth.
We study polygonal billiards with one-sided vertical mirror scattered on a square billiard table. We associate trajectories of these kinds of billiards with double rotations and study orbit behavior and questions of complexity.
We prove that a polygonal billiard with one-sided mirrors has zero topological entropy. In certain cases we show sub exponential and for other polynomial estimates on the complexity.
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…
We prove that the natural invariant surface associated with the billiard game on an irrational polygonal table is homeomorphic to the Loch Ness monster, that is, the only orientable infinite genus topological real surface with exactly one end.
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 introduce the class of piecewise convex transformations, and study their complexity. We apply the results to the complexity of polygonal billiards on surfaces of constant curvature.
We introduce a new equivalence relation on the set of all polygonal billiards. We say that two billiards (or polygons) are order equivalent if each of the billiards has an orbit whose footpoints are dense in the boundary and the two sequences of footpoints of these orbits have the same combinatorial order. We study this equivalence relation with additional regularity conditions on the orbit.
We study polygonal billiards with reflection laws contracting the reflected angle towards the normal. It is shown that if a polygon does not have parallel sides facing each other, then the corresponding billiard map has finitely many ergodic SRB measures whose basins cover a set of full Lebesgue measure.
We prove that polygonal billiards with contracting reflection laws exhibit hyperbolic attractors with countably many ergodic SRB measures. These measures are robust under small perturbations of the reflection law, and the tables for which they exist form a generic set in the space of all polygons. Specific polygonal tables are studied in detail.
We consider the set of polygons all of whose sides are vertical or horizontal with fixed combinatorics (for example all the figure "L"s). We show that there is a dense G $δ$ subset of such polygons such that for each polygon in this G $δ$ set the billiard flow is weakly-mixing in almost every direction.
Two polygons $P,Q$ are code equivalent if there are billiard orbits $u,v$ which hit the same sequence of sides and such that the projections of the orbits are dense in the boundaries $\partial P, \partial Q$. Our main results show when code equivalent polygons have the same angles, resp. are similar, resp. affinely similar.
A formal definition of a (mathematical) polygonal Andreev billiard and a construction of an equivalence relation that captures the dynamics described in physical toy model of Andreev reflection are given. The continuous flow and discrete flow on the respective phase spaces. It is then shown that the continuous flow preserves the absolute value of the volume element $dx\wedge dy\wedge dθ$ and the billiard (collision) map preserves the measure $\cos ϕdr dϕ$, respectively. One can then characterize the dynamics of a rational polygonal Andreev billiard table. Finally, a discussions of the effect o…
\textsc{J. Hadamard} studied the geometric properties of geodesic flows on surfaces of negative curvature, thus initiating "Symbolic Dynamics". In this article, we follow the same geometric approach to study the geodesic trajectories of billiards in "rational polygons" on the hyperbolic plane. We particularly show that the billiard dynamics resulting thus are just 'Subshifts of Finite Type' or their dense subsets. We further show that 'Subshifts of Finite Type' play a central role in subshift dynamics and while discussing the topological structure of the space of all subshifts, we demonstrate …
In this paper, we discuss rotation number on the invariant curve of a one parameter family of outer billiard tables. Given a convex polygon $η$, we can construct an outer billiard table $T$ by cutting out a fixed area from the interior of $η$. $T$ is piece-wise hyperbolic and the polygon $η$ is an invariant curve of $T$ under the billiard map $ϕ$. We will show that, if $β$ is a periodic point under the outer billiard map with rational rotation number $τ= p / q$, then the $n$th iteration of the billiard map is not the local identity at $β$. This proves that the rotation number $τ$ as a function…
The bounce spectrum of a polygonal billiard table is the collection of all bi-infinite sequences of edge labels corresponding to billiard trajectories on the table. We give methods for reconstructing from the bounce spectrum of a polygonal billiard table both the cyclic ordering of its edge labels and the sizes of its angles. We also show that it is impossible to reconstruct the exact shape of a polygonal billiard table from any finite collection of finite words from its bounce spectrum.
Consider two $k$-gons $P$ and $Q$. We say that the billiard flows in $P$ and $Q$ are homotopically equivalent if the set of conjugacy classes in the fundamental group of $P$ which contain a periodic billiard orbit agrees with the analogous set for $Q$. We study this equivalence relationship and compare it to the equivalence relations, order equivalence and code equivalence, introduced in \cite{BT1,BT2}. In particular we show if $P$ is a rational polygon, and $Q$ is homotopically equivalent to $P$, then $P$ and $Q$ are similar, or affinely similar if all sides of $P$ are vertical and horizontal…
We consider polygonal billiards with collisions contracting the reflection angle towards the normal to the boundary of the table. In previous work, we proved that such billiards has a finite number of ergodic SRB measures supported on hyperbolic generalized attractors. Here we study the relation of these measures with the ergodic absolutely continuous invariant probability measures (acips) of the slap map, the 1-dimensional map obtained from the billiard map when the angle of reflection is always equal to zero. Our main result states that for a generic polygon, if the reflection law has a Lips…
In this article, we study polygonal symplectic billiards. We provide new results, some of which are inspired by numerical investigations. In particular, we present several polygons for which all orbits are periodic. We demonstrate their properties and derive various conjectures using two numerical implementations.
We prove polynomial upper bounds for the deviation of ergodic averages for the straight line flow on every translation surface in almost every direction, in particular for those surfaces arising from rational polygonal billiards.
We introduce a new method for estimating the growth of various quantities arising in dynamical systems. We apply our method to polygonal billiards on surfaces of constant curvature. For instance, we obtain power bounds of degree two plus epsilon in length for the number of billiard orbits between almost all pairs of points in a planar polygon.
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 polygons
We introduce a new notion of stability for periodic orbits in polygonal billiards. We say that a periodic orbit of a polygonal billiard is $λ$-stable if there is a periodic orbit for the corresponding pinball billiard which converges to it as $λ$ $\rightarrow$ 1. This notion of stability is unrelated to the notion introduced by Galperin, Stepin and Vorobets. We give sufficient and necessary conditions for a periodic orbit to be $λ$-stable and prove that the set of d-gons having at most finite number of $λ$-stable periodic orbits is dense is the space of d-gons. Moreover, we also determine comp…
We study the notion of Fagnano orbits for dual polygonal billiards. We used them to characterize regular polygons and we study the iteration of the developing map.
We describe Veech groups of flat surfaces arising from irrational angled polygonal billiards or irreducible stable abelian differentials. For irrational polygonal billiards, we prove that these groups are non-discrete subgroups of SO(2,R) and we calculate their rank.
We consider polygonal billiards and we show the uniqueness of coding of non-periodic billiard trajectories in polygons whose holes have non-zero minimal diameters, generalising a theorem of Galperin, Krüger and Troubetzkoy.
We study the recurrence and ergodicity for the billiard on noncompact polygonal surfaces with a free, cocompact action of $\Z$ or $\Z^2$. In the $\Z$-periodic case, we establish criteria for recurrence. In the more difficult $\Z^2$-periodic case, we establish some general results. For a particular family of $\Z^2$-periodic polygonal surfaces, known in the physics literature as the wind-tree model, assuming certain restrictions of geometric nature, we obtain the ergodic decomposition of directional billiard dynamics for a dense, countable set of directions. This is a consequence of our results …
We discuss the interplay between the piece-line regular and vertex-angle singular boundary effects, related to integrability and chaotic features in rational polygonal billiards. The approach to controversial issue of regular and irregular motion in polygons is taken within the alternative deterministic and stochastic frameworks. The analysis is developed in terms of the billiard-wall collision distribution and the particle survival probability, simulated in closed and weakly open polygons, respectively. In the multi-vertex polygons, the late-time wall-collision events result in the circular-l…
In this paper we establish a kind of bijection between the orbits of a polygonal outer billiards system and the orbits of a related (and simpler to analyze) system called the pinwheel map. One consequence of the result is that the outer billiards system has unbounded orbits if and only if the pinwheel map has unbounded orbits. As the pinwheel map is much easier to analyze directly, we think that this bijection will be helpful in attacking some of the main questions about polyonal outer billiards.
We study dissipative polygonal outer billiards, i.e. outer billiards about convex polygons with a contractive reflection law. We prove that dissipative outer billiards about any triangle and the square are asymptotically periodic, i.e. they have finitely many global attracting periodic orbits. A complete description of the bifurcations of the periodic orbits as the contraction rates vary is given. For the square billiard, we also show that the asymptotic periodic behavior is robust under small perturbations of the vertices and the contraction rates. Finally, we describe some numerical experime…
Outer Billiards is a geometrically inspired dynamical system based on a convex shape in the plane. When the shape is a polygon, the system has a combinatorial flavor. In the polygonal case, there is a natural acceleration of the map, a first return map to a certain strip in the plane. The arithmetic graph is a geometric encoding of the symbolic dynamics of this first return map. In the case of the regular octagon, the case we study, the arithmetic graphs associated to periodic orbits are polygonal paths in R^8. We are interested in the asymptotic shapes of these polygonal paths, as the period …
A planar polygonal billiard $¶$ is said to have the finite blocking property if for every pair $(O,A)$ of points in $¶$ there exists a finite number of ``blocking'' points $B_1, ..., B_n$ such that every billiard trajectory from $O$ to $A$ meets one of the $B_i$'s. As a counter-example to a theorem of Hiemer and Snurnikov, we construct a family of rational billiards that lack the finite blocking property.
The dynamics of a beam held on a horizontal frame by springs and bouncing off a step is described by a separable two degrees of freedom Hamiltonian system with impacts that respect, point wise, the separability symmetry. The energy in each degree of freedom is preserved, and the motion along each level set is conjugated, via action angle coordinates, to a geodesic flow on a flat two-dimensional surface in the four dimensional phase space. Yet, for a range of energies, these surfaces are not the simple Liouville-Arnold tori - these are tori of genus two, thus the motion on them is not conjugate…
We study billiard dynamics inside an ellipse for which the axes lengths are changed periodically in time and an $O(δ)$-small quartic polynomial deformation is added to the boundary. In this situation the energy of the particle in the billiard is no longer conserved. We show a Fermi acceleration in such system: there exists a billiard trajectory on which the energy tends to infinity. The construction is based on the analysis of dynamics in the phase space near a homoclinic intersection of the stable and unstable manifolds of the normally hyperbolic invariant cylinder $Λ$, parameterised by the e…
Particle motion in a smoothly oscillating non-integrable billiard is known to result in unbounded energy growth. Though the asymptotic energy growth rate of an ensemble of particles in an oscillating chaotic billiard is known to be quadratic, there are no estimates available for smoothly oscillating pseudo-integrable billiards. The energy growth rate in such systems is so slow that it is very hard to predict the asymptotic rates from finite time computations. In this paper, a method is proposed to estimate the asymptotic energy growth rate in a system by using short-time data. The idea is appl…
We give the asymptotic growth of the number of primitive periodic trajectories of a two dimensional dispersive billiard, when we prescribe their number of bounces on one of the obstacles.
A system consisting of a chaotic (billiard-like) oscillator coupled to a linear wave equation in the three-dimensional space is considered. It is shown that the chaotic behaviour of the oscillator can cause the transfer of energy from a monochromatic wave to the oscillator, whose energy can grow without bound.
We perform numerical measurements of the moments of the position of a tracer particle in a two-dimensional periodic billiard model (Lorentz gas) with infinite corridors. This model is known to exhibit a weak form of super-diffusion, in the sense that there is a logarithmic correction to the linear growth in time of the mean-squared displacement. We show numerically that this expected asymptotic behavior is easily overwhelmed by the subleading linear growth throughout the time-range accessible to numerical simulations. We compare our simulations to the known analytical results for the variance …