Billiards in nearly isosceles triangles (Q2268266)

This paper concerns periodic billiard paths in triangles. It is known that acute, right, and isosceles triangles always have periodic billiard paths. Moreover, if the triangle is isosceles, then there exists a periodic billiard path of combinatorial 2131. But this path is unstable. It disappears as soon as the triangle is perturbed in such a way that it is no longer isosceles. In this paper, the authors mainly prove that any sufficiently small perturbation of an isosceles triangle has a periodic billiard path. Their proof concerns analyzing of certain infinite families of Fourier series that arise in connection with triangular billiards and the proof shows some self-similarity phenomena in irrational triangular billiards. Their analysis illustrates that billiards on a triangle near a Veech triangle is extremely complicated even through billiards on a Veech triangle is well understood.