Hyperelliptic Jacobians as billiard algebra of pencils of quadrics: Beyond Poncelet porisms (Q952410)

The paper is devoted to the study of higher-dimensional analogues of Poncelet-like problems. Following the thirty years old programme of Griffiths and Harris, the paper presents a synthetic approach to higher genera addition theorems. Starting with the observation of the billiard nature of some classical constructions and configurations, the billiard algebra, i.e. a group structure on the set \(T\) of lines simultaneously tangent to \(d-1\) quadrics from a given confocal family in the \(d\)-dimensional Euclidean space, is constructed. Using this tool, the related results of Reid, Donagi and Knörrer are further developed, realized and simplified. The paper establishes the following fundamental property of \(T\): any two lines from \(T\) can be obtained from each other by at most \(d-1\) billiard reflections at some quadrics from the confocal family. The following two hierarchies of notions are introduced: \(s\)-skew lines in \(T\) and \(s\)-weak Poncelet trajectories, \(s=-1,0,\dots ,d-2\). The interrelations between billiard dynamics, linear subspaces of intersections of quadrics and hyperelliptic Jacobians developed in the paper enable to obtain higher-dimensional and higher-genera generalizations of several classical genus results: Cayley's theorem, Weyr's theorem, Griffiths-Harris theorem, and Darboux theorem.