Projective cones for sequential dispersing billiards (Q6160270)

The authors construct Birkhoff cones for dispersing billiard systems, which are contracted by the action of the corresponding transfer operator. With the help of this construction many statistical properties can be studied in more detail. The work starts with a formal definition of all necessary concepts followed by the main result. This result then is applied to various classes of maps. The main focus of the paper, the cone, is then investigated in more detail and properties of the cone are derived. The work finishes with applications of the constructed theory to various physical systems. In particular the authors emphasize that it should be possible to carry over their ideas and results to various other billiard-type systems, e.g., billiards in electromagnetic fields or hyperbolic billiards. The formulas obtained should undergo small variations in the case of these other billiard-type systems. Though the article is rather lengthy many ideas and results are discussed. A broad reference list supplements this paper.