Convex billiards and a theorem by E. Hopf (Q1320990): Difference between revisions

We consider billiards in convex compact planar domains. Our main result states that if the phase space of the billiard ball map is foliated by not null-homotopic continuous invariant curves then the domain is circular. The result solves in part a Birkhoff's conjecture that only for elliptic domains billiards are integrable. We give a variational version of this result: the only billiards without conjugate points are circular billiards. The main tool of the paper is to apply the ``discrete version'' of E. Hopf's method invented for Riemannian manifolds without conjugate points.