On the distribution of the free path length of the linear flow in a honeycomb (Q2390092)

The periodic Lorentz gas is a much-studied planar billiard with circular scatterers of equal radius, centred at points with integer coordinates. The present work deals with a variant of this problem, which consists of removing the scatterers whose coordinates satisfy a certain congruence relation. The authors consider the distribution of the free path lengths of a point particle starting at the origin, as a function of the initial direction of motion. This distribution is computed explicitly. These results are then applied to the case of scatterers arranged on a honeycomb lattice.