Further thoughts on a focusing property of the ellipse (Q1890768)

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scientific article; zbMATH DE number 757751
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    Further thoughts on a focusing property of the ellipse
    scientific article; zbMATH DE number 757751

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      Further thoughts on a focusing property of the ellipse (English)
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      15 November 1995
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      Given an ellipse \(e\) with foci \(F_ 1\) and \(F_ 2\). If a ball is fired from \(F_ 1\) it will be reflected twice by \(e\) and return to \(F_ 1\) (the path contains \(F_ 2\)). The author studies the ``return map'' of the starting into the resulting direction by intersection with a small circle centered in \(F_ 1\). He shows that the map of this cirlce is a Möbius transformation. Basing on that fact he defines an iteration process (``\(n\)-th return map'') and gives generalisations for ellipsoides of rotation. Then he gives some results on changes of the probability densities induced by this \(n\)-th return map. He shows that the probability of any event that avoids an arbitrary small neighbourhood of the direction of the principle axis of the ellipse \(e\) (or the ellipsoid) must tend to zero.
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      reflections
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      ellipse
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      probability density
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      return map
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