Combinatorics of periodic ellipsoidal billiards (Q6158139)

In this work the combinatorics of billiard partitions is studied. In particular (starting from the recent paper [\textit{V. Dragović} and \textit{M. Radnović}, Adv. Math. 424, Article ID 109044, 51 p. (2023; Zbl 1512.14019)]) the periodicity condition for billiard trajectories in \(d\)-dimensional space are related with the Pell functional-polynomial equation for extremal polynomials of \(d\) intervals on the real line. In this framework, the winding numbers of a periodic trajectory correspond to the numbers of internal extremal points. The work studies the related combinatorics in terms of a generating function. Explicit generating functions are worked out and are discussed in several examples. The reference list includes various recent developments in this subject.