Ergodic directions for billiards in a strip with periodically located obstacles (Q2447607)

The authors consider an infinite periodic billiard and study the size of the set of ergodic directions for the directional billiard flows. Let \(T(h, a, \lambda)\) be the billiard table given by an infinite band \(\mathbb{R} \times [0, h]\) with periodically placed linear barriers of length \(0< \lambda< h\) handling from the lower side of the band orthogonally. The billiard flow \(\{ \varphi_t \}_{t \in \mathbb{R}}\) is defined on the subset of the phase space \(T(h, a, \lambda) \times S^1\) that consists of the points \((x, \theta) \in T(h, a, \lambda) \times S^1\) such that if \(x\) belongs to the boundary of \(T(h, a, \lambda)\), then \(\theta\) is an inward direction. For \(t \in \mathbb{R}\) and \((x, \theta)\) in the domain of \(\{ \varphi_t \}_{t \in \mathbb{R}}\), \(\varphi_t\) maps \((x, \theta)\) to \(\varphi_t(x, \theta) = (x_t, \theta_t)\), where \(x_t\) is the point reached after time \(t\) by flowing at unit speed along the billiard trajectory starting at \(x\) in direction \(\theta\), and \(\theta_t\) is the tangent direction to the trajectory at \(x_t\). Denote by \(\Gamma \theta\) the directions of the billiard trajectory, that is, \(\{ \theta, -\theta, \pi - \theta, \pi + \theta \}\). Then, for any \(\theta \in S^1\), \(T(h, a, \lambda) \times \Gamma \theta\) is an invariant set of the billiard flow. The flow \(\{ \varphi_t^\theta \}_{t \in \mathbb{R}}\) is the restriction of \(\{ \varphi_t \}_{t \in \mathbb{R}}\) to this set. Then \(\{ \varphi_t^\theta \}_{t \in \mathbb{R}}\) preserves the product of the Lebesgue measure on \(T(h, a, \lambda)\) and the counting measure on the orbit \(\Gamma \theta\). We say that \(\{ \varphi_t^\theta \}_{t \in \mathbb{R}}\) is ergodic if it is ergodic with respect to this natural invariant measure, and in this case, the \(\theta\) is called an ergodic direction. In this paper, it is proved that the set of ergodic directions is always uncountable. Moreover, if \(\lambda/h \in (0, 1)\) is rational, then the Hausdorff dimension of the set of ergodic directions is greater than 1/2.