How to hear the shape of a billiard table

Abstract: The bounce spectrum of a polygonal billiard table is the collection of all bi-infinite sequences of edge labels corresponding to billiard trajectories on the table. We give methods for reconstructing from the bounce spectrum of a polygonal billiard table both the cyclic ordering of its edge labels and the sizes of its angles. We also show that it is impossible to reconstruct the exact shape of a polygonal billiard table from any finite collection of finite words from its bounce spectrum.

This page was built for publication: How to hear the shape of a billiard table

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q6303481)