Diffusion speed in piecewise smooth billiards (Q5962396)

To a convex closed curve in the plane, one can associate two dynamical systems, the inner and the outer billiard. When the curve is in addition smooth and strictly convex, KAM theory applies to both billiards and the orbits cannot accumulate on the curve. Several results prove that this fails when the curve is not strictly convex or when it is not smooth. Those accumulating orbits are usually found by means of a variational approach and the diffusion speed is not easy to estimate. The main result of the paper is for billiards that are strictly convex and fail to be smooth at one point, where there is a jump on the curvature. It is proved that for both the inner and outer billiard of this curve, there exists an orbit that approach the curve at speed \(1/n^2\), where \(n\) is the index of the sequence. The proof is based in the theory of normal forms.