65 pages, computer-aided proof. Auxilliary program, Billiard King, available from author's website. Latest version is essentially the same as earlier versions, but with minor improvements and many typos fixed
Outer billiards is a basic dynamical system, defined relative to a planar convex shape. This system was introduced in the 1950's by B.H. Neumann and later popularized in the 1970's by J. Moser. All along, one of the central questions has been: is there an outer billiards system with an unbounded orbit. We answer this question by proving that outer billiards defined relative to the Penrose Kite has an unbounded orbit. The Penrose kite is the quadrilateral that appears in the famous Penrose tiling. We also analyze some of the finer orbit structure of outer billiards on the penrose kite. This analysis shows that there is an uncountable set of unbounded orbits. Our method of proof relates the problem to self-similar tilings, polygon exchange maps, and arithmetic dynamics.
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.
In the class of projective billiards, which contains the usual billiards, we exhibit counter-examples to Ivrii's conjecture, which states that in any planar billiard with smooth boundary the set of periodic orbits has zero measure. The counter-examples are polygons admitting a $2$-parameters family of $n$-periodic orbits, with $n$ being either $3$ or any even number grower than $4$.
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…
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.
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…
In this paper, outer billiards outside regular octagon are studied in details. We described all periodic points and their periods; also, we proved that the periodic points form a set of full measure outside the octagon and found an aperiodic point.
We show that for almost every $(P,λ)$ where $P$ is a convex polygon and $λ\in(0,1)$, the corresponding outer billiard about $P$ with contraction $λ$ is asymptotically periodic, i.e., has a finite number of periodic orbits and every orbit is attracted to one of them.
We study outer billiards with contraction outside regular polygons. For regular $n$-gons with $n = 3, 4, 5, 6, 8$, and $12$, we show that as the contraction rate approaches $1$, dynamics of the system converges, in a certain sense, to that of the usual outer billiards map. These are precisely the values of $n \geq 3$ with $[\mathbb{Q}(e^{2πi/n}):\mathbb{Q}] \leq 2$. Then we discuss how such convergence may fail in the case of $n=7$.
We give a simple proof of our previous result with V. Zharnitsky that the set of period 4 orbits in planar outer billiard with piecewise smooth convex boundary has empty interior, provided that no four corners of the boundary form a parallelogram. We also obtain results on period 5 and 6 orbits.
In this paper outer, or dual, billiards outside regular polygons are studied; in particular, periodic points for cases of strictly convex "tables" and for regular n-gons with n = 3,4,6,8,12 are discussed. The main results of the paper are: 1) proof of an existence of aperiodic points for outer billiards outside regular octagon and dodecagon; 2) proof of the fact that for regular octagon, set of periodic points is of full measure; 3) list of all possible periods for case of regular octagon.
In this paper we present new results regarding the periodicity of outer billiards in the hyperbolic plane around polygonal tables which are tiles in regular two-piece tilings of the hyperbolic plane.
Outer billiards is a simple dynamical system based on a convex planar shape. The Moser-Neumann question, first posed by B.H. Neumann around 1960, asks if there exists a planar shape for which outer billiards has an unbounded orbit. The first half of this monograph proves that outer billiards has an unbounded orbit defined relative to any irrational kite. The second half of the monograph gives a very sharp description of the set of unbounded orbits, both in terms of the dynamics and the Hausdorff dimension. The analysis in both halves reveals a close connection between outer billiards on kites …
An existence of an aperiodic point for outer billiard outside regular dodecagon is proved. Additionally, almost all orbits of such an outer billiard are proved to be periodic, and all possible periods are listed explicitly. The proof is based on facts established with computer program implemented by author. All calculations of a program has been made with absolute accuracy; these calculations can be done "by hands" but it this case, amount of calculations would be too large.
We give a beautiful explicit example of a convex plane curve such that the outer billiard has a given finite number of invariant curves. Moreover, the dynamics on these curves is a standard shift. This example can be considered as an outer analog of the so-called Gutkin billiard tables. We test total integrability of these billiards, in the region between the two invariant curves. Next, we provide computer simulations on the dynamics in this region. At first glance, the dynamics looks regular but by magnifying the picture we see components of chaotic behavior near the hyperbolic periodic orbit…
We consider the outer billiards map with contraction outside polygons. We construct a 1-parameter family of systems such that each system has an open set in which the dynamics is reduced to that of a piecewise contraction on the interval. Using the theory of rotation numbers, we deduce that every point inside the open set is asymptotic to either a single periodic orbit (rational case) or a Cantor set (irrational case). In particular, we deduce existence of an attracting Cantor set for certain parameter values. Moreover, for a different choice of a 1-parameter family, we prove that the system i…
Instituto de Matemáticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México（墨西哥国立自治大学数学研究所）；Department of Mathematics, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México（墨西哥自治理工学院数学系）
Following a recent paper by Baryshnikov and Zharnitskii, we consider outer billiards in the plane possessing invariant curves consisting of periodic orbits. We prove the existence and abundance of such tables using tools from sub-Riemannian geometry. We also prove that the set of 3-periodic outer billiard orbits has zero measure.
In this long paper we give a fairly complete analysis of outer billiards on the Penrose kite. Our analysis reveals that this 2-dimensional non-compact system has a 3-dimensional compactification, a certain polyhedron exchange map, and that this compactification has a renormalization scheme. These two features allow us to make some sharp statements concerning the distribution, large-scale geometry, fine-scale geometry, and hidden algebraic symmetries of the orbits. For instance, one of our results is that the union of the unbounded orbits has Hausdorff dimension 1. We give a computer-aided proo…
We present the first example of a hyperbolic outer billiard. More precisely we construct a one parameter family of examples which in some sense correspond to the Bunimovich billiards.
We consider outer billiard outside regular convex polygons. We deal with the case of regular polygons with $\{3,4,5,6,10\}$ sides, and we describe the symbolic dynamics of the map and compute the complexity of the language.
It is shown that the set of 4-period orbits in outer billiard with piecewise smooth convex boundary has an empty interior, provided that no four corners of the boundary form a parallelogram.
In this article, we study the decay rates of the correlation functions for a hyperbolic system $T: M \to M$ with singularities that preserves a unique mixing SRB measure $μ$. We prove that, under some general assumptions, the correlations $ C_{n}(f,g)$ decay exponentially as $n\to \infty$ for each pair of piecewise Hölder observables $f, g\in L^p(μ)$ and for each $p>1$. As an application, we prove that the autocorrelations of the first return time functions decay exponentially for the induced maps of various billiard systems, which include the semi-dispersing billiards on a rectangle, billiard…
In 1973, J. Moser proposed that his Twist Theorem could be used to show that orbits of the outer billiards map on a sufficiently smooth closed curve were always bounded. Five years later Moser asked the same question for a convex polygon. In 1987 F. Vivaldi and A. Shaidenko showed that all orbits for a regular polygon must be bounded. R. Schwartz recently showed that a quadrilateral known as a Penrose Kite has unbounded orbits and he proposed that 'most' convex polygons support unbounded orbits. Except for a few special cases, very little is known about the dynamics of the outer billiards map …
This paper is the third in a series which explores a combinatorial method for generating lattice polygons in the plane. I call this method the plaid model. In this paper I prove the main result I had been aiming for since the beginning, which is to show that there is a coarse isomorphism between the plaid model and the so-called arithmetic graph for outer billiards on kites. The content of the theorem is that the plaid model predicts the symbolic dynamics of the outer billiards orbits, up to an error of one unit. This result combines with the work in the other papers to give a second proof tha…
Let $v$ be a unit vector field on a complete, umbilic (but not totally geodesic) hypersurface $N$ in a space form; for example on the unit sphere $S^{2k-1} \subset \mathbb{R}^{2k}$, or on a horosphere in hyperbolic space. We give necessary and sufficient conditions on $v$ for the rays with initial velocities $v$ (and $-v$) to foliate the exterior $U$ of $N$. We find and explore relationships among these vector fields, geodesic vector fields, and contact structures on $N$. When the rays corresponding to each of $\pm v$ foliate $U$, $v$ induces an outer billiard map whose billiard table is $U$. …
In 1978 Jurgen Moser suggested the outer billiards map (Tangent map) as a discontinuous model of Hamiltonian dynamics. A decade earlier, J.B. Jackson and his colleagues at Bell Labs were trying to understand the source of self-sustaining oscillations in digital filters. Some of the discrete mappings used to describe these filters show a remarkable ability to 'shadow' the Tangent map when the polygon in question is regular. In this paper we describe a specific digital filter map (Df) that appears to have dynamics which are conjugate to the Tangent map for a regular N-gon with N even. When N is …
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 …
This paper is a sequel to my paper "Introducing the Plaid Model". In this paper it is shown that the plaid model has unbounded polygonal paths for every irrational parameter. This result parallels my result that outer billiards on kites has unbounded orbits for every irrational parameter
The aim of this paper is to study quasi-rational polygons related to the outer billiard. We compare different notions introduced, and make a synthesis of those.
