Billiards with Pesin region of measure one (Q1107887)

Birkhoff, Krylov and Arnold gave intuitive interpretations of the relations between the dynamical systems of the billiard type and the geodesic flows of surfaces. The study of ergodic properties of these flows in surfaces of negative curvature shows the importance of the transversal stable and unstable foliations. Wojtkowski proved that some examples of billiards (the cardioid, an epycycloid, a square with a hole of the shape of an astroid) have Pesin region of measure 1. Besides, this property is preserved under small perturbations of their boundaries. In this paper it is proved that the condition obtained by Woijtkowski for focusing curves is not generic. More precisely, open conditions for focusing C 4 curves are obtained. The author uses procedures which permit the study of all these properties looking at the asymptotic behaviours of certain quadratic forms. The existence of contracting and expanding subspaces detected by these forms permit the application of Pesin's theory which guarantee the construction of local stable and unstable foliations that generally are not uniform, neither in length nor in their angle, but are suitable to obtain certain ergodic properties.