An upper bound on topological entropy of the Bunimovich stadium billiard map (Q6081427)

The authors study the topological entropy of the billiard map inside a Bunimovich stadium. For topological dynamical systems, the topological entropy is a quantitative measure of system's complexity and takes nonnegative values. The authors explore the precise definition of this notion, which is roughly the exponential growth rate of observable orbits over time. Let \(B_l\) be the Bunimovich stadium billiard table with the lengths of straight segments \(l > 0\). The authors define billiard map's phase space as \(M_l:=\{(s, \theta ):s\in B_l, \theta \in(- \pi/2,\pi/2)\}\). They suppose that the billiard map \(F_l\) is the first return map of the billiard flow \(\Phi\) to the set \(M_l\). The topological entropy of the billiard map \(F_l\) is then calculated. Let \(h_{top}(F_l)\) be the topological entropy of the billiard map \(F_l\). The authors prove that \(h_{top}(F_l)<\log(3.49066)\).