Convex billiards (Q910713)

This is a nicely written article whose content includes short surveys of related studies, open problems, conjectures and a half-dozen new results. We mention one theorem and one conjecture. A billiard table K in \(E^ d\) is a convex body whose boundary is \(C^ 1\). A billiard ball is a point of K which moves at unit velocity and in a straight line in the interior of K and is reflected at the boundary of K in the usual manner. A trajectory in K is the curve described by a billiard ball. A non-empty compact convex set \(K_ 1\) in the interior of K is a caustic if any trajectory, which touches \(K_ 1\) once, touches it again after each reflection. The subspace of billiard tables of the space of all convex bodies in \(E^ d\), with the Hausdorff metric, is a Baire space. A property holds for most elements of a Baire space if it holds for all elements except those in a meager set. Theorem. Most billiard tables in \(E^ d\) contain no caustic. Conjecture. For \(d\geq 3\), the only billiard tables in \(E^ d\) having caustics are the ellipsoids.