Introducing symplectic billiards (Q1649351): Difference between revisions

The authors introduce and explore a new variety of dynamical system called symplectic billiards. Conventional billiard dynamics in the sense of Birkhoff can be formulated as a variational problem in which periodic trajectories are inscribed polygons of extremal perimeter length. Symplectic billiards for a strictly convex curve in the plane are defined by the condition that, given two points on the curve, the position of the third is determined so as to maximize the area of the resulting triangle. This is analogous to the ``reflection dynamics'' of the conventional Birkhoff billiards. The authors go on to formulate the dynamics in a convex domain in the linear symplectic space \((\mathbb{R}^{2n},\omega)\). This paper has three parts consisting of two-dimensional dynamics with smooth boundary, with polygonal boundary, and then multidimensional symplectic billiards. The main results of the paper are as follows: in the planar case, symplectic billiards give rise to a monotone, area-preserving twist map. Further, if the boundary curve has a point of zero curvature, then the symplectic dynamics has no caustics. If the billiard boundary is affine regular or a trapezoid, then all orbits are periodic. In the third part of the paper, the authors consider multidimensional dynamics with an ellipsoid as boundary and argue that the dynamics then are completely integrable. They then provide some results for symplectic billiards inside an arbitrary strictly convex closed smooth hypersurface. In particular, they prove that for every \(k\geq 2\), the symplectic billiard map has a \(k\)-periodic trajectory.