Geometric orbits (Q444053): Difference between revisions

The authors examine an interesting problem dealing with the orbit of a point in the plane of a triangle \(\triangle ABC\) which is successively being projected to the sides of that triangle in any order. Denote the sides of the triangle by \(a, b, c\) and let \(\pi_l\) denote the orthogonal projection onto a line \(l.\) Then one can define maps \(\phi_{ab} = \pi_b \circ \pi_a\) and \(\phi_{abc}:= \pi_c \circ \pi_b \circ \pi_a\) that can be iterated any number of times. The sequence \((\phi^n(P))_{n \in \mathbb N_0}\) is called the orbit of a point \(P\) by \(\phi.\) That way one obtains a discrete dynamical system in the plane defined by \(\mathcal F (n, P) = \phi^n (P).\) The primary focus is the description of the set of accumulation points of the orbit of each point \(x\) (the so-called \(\omega\)-limit of \(x\)). For example, the points of the sequence \(((\phi_{ab})^n(P))_{n\in \mathbb N_0}\) belong to the side \(b\) and converge to the vertex of the angle formed by intersecting lines \(a\) and \(b.\) In the case of a triangle and \(\phi = \phi_{abc}\), the authors show that there is a fixed point \(G\) of \(\phi\) which is a general attractor, i.e. accumulation point of \(\phi^n(x)\) as \(n \to \infty\) regardless of the starting point \(x.\) The limit triangle determined by the orbit of \(G\) under \(\phi\) is similar to the original one, only rotated by \(90^{\circ}.\) They also compute the ratio of the areas of the limit triangle and the original one in terms of the angles. Moreover, if the order of the projections is changed and \(\phi_{bac}\) considered, then the limit triangle for the iterates of this map is another triangle congruent to the original one with the six vertices of the two limit triangles belonging to a single circle. To generalize, one can consider a sequence \(\lambda = (\lambda_n)_{n\in \mathbb N}\) in \(\{a, b, c \}^{\mathbb N}\) and the corresponding dynamical system \(\phi_{\lambda}\) given by \(\phi (x) = \cdots \pi_{\lambda_3}\circ \pi_{\lambda_2} \circ \pi_{\lambda_1}.\) If this sequence is periodic i.e. \(\lambda =(\lambda_1\cdots \lambda_k \lambda_1\cdots \lambda_k \cdots),\) the associated dynamical system has a globally attractive fixed point whose images by all \(\pi_{\lambda_j}\) make up a polygon. The authors also indicate what might happen when the sequence \(\lambda\) is not periodic, to the effect that for a sufficiently random sequence of letters the corresponding dynamics has a dense orbit in the triangle. They also comment on the situation when one projects not orthogonally to the sides of a triangle but at a certain angle with respect to the perpendicular, or even involving three different angles, one for each side.