The geometry of the Wigner caustic and a decomposition of a curve into parallel arcs (Q2054422)

The authors study global properties of the Wigner caustic of parameterized closed planar curves. They consider the Wigner caustic of rosettes, i.e., regular closed parameterized curves with non-vanishing curvature and present a decomposition of a curve into parallel arcs to describe smooth branches of the Wigner caustic. By this construction they find the number of smooth branches, the rotation number, the number of inflexion points and the parity of the number of cusp singularities of each branch. They also study the global properties of the Wigner caustic on shell (the branch of the Wigner caustic connecting two inflexion points of a curve). The results are applied to whorls, the important object to study the dynamics of a quantum particle in the optical lattice potential.