Divergent trajectories in the periodic wind-tree model (Q1953848)

The author considers the periodic wind-tree model, which is a family of billiards in the plane in which identical rectangular scatterers are disposed at each integer point. Although the model is different from the Lorentz gas (or the Sinai billiards with convex scatterers), the author is able to prove that for many tables in this family, there are many points whose trajectories diverge from each other. Given a rational billiard, there is a classical procedure to get a translation surface using the unfolding procedure. Using the renormalization procedure of S. Ferenczi and L. Zamboni for linear flows on translation surfaces, the author is able to use continued fraction to code the linearization of the flow, which is also a typical trick to study hyperbolicity in convex billiards.