In search of a measure in Poncelet's porism (Q1677516): Difference between revisions

Inspired by the delightful paper of \textit{J. L. King} [Am. Math. Mon. 101, No. ~7, 609--628 (1994; Zbl 0820.28007)] and setting off where King's paper stopped, the authors of the paper under review consider the Poncelet diffeomorphism \(\varphi:C_2\to C_2\) for the general case of an oval \(C_2\) lying inside a circle \(C_1\). Using the support function parametrization of \(C_2\) (cf., e.g., [\textit{H. Flanders}, ibid. 75, 581--593 (1968; Zbl 0162.25803)]) and elementary geometric considerations, they calculate the derivative of \(\varphi\) and from this deduce that an invariant measure for \(\varphi\) in the case where \(C_2\) is an ellipse is, up to a constant, given by the reciprocal of the area of the triangle spanned by a chord of \(C_1\) tangent to \(C_2\) and the center of \(C_2\).