Counting periodic trajectories of Finsler billiards

DOI10.3842/SIGMA.2020.022MaRDI QIDQ1987293zbMATH OpenFDO

Publication date 14 April 2020

Published in SIGMA. Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.07930

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Finsler manifolds Lusternik-Schnirelmann theory magnetic billiards mathematical billiards Morse theory unlabeled cyclic configuration spaces

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Periodic and quasi-periodic flows and diffeomorphisms (37C55) Dynamical systems with singularities (billiards, etc.) (37C83) Periodic, homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits of finite-dimensional Hamiltonian systems (37J46) Discriminantal varieties and configuration spaces in algebraic topology (55R80) Abstract critical point theory (Morse theory, Lyusternik-Shnirel'man theory, etc.) in infinite-dimensional spaces (58E05) Periodic and almost periodic solutions for problems in Hamiltonian and Lagrangian mechanics (70H12)

Abstract: We provide lower bounds on the number of periodic Finsler billiard trajectories inside a quadratically convex smooth closed hypersurface

M

in a

d

-dimensional Finsler space with possibly irreversible Finsler metric. An example of such a system is a billiard in a sufficiently weak magnetic field. The

r

-periodic Finsler billiard trajectories correspond to

r

-gons inscribed in

M

and having extremal Finsler length. The cyclic group

{m a t h b b Z}_{r}

acts on these extremal polygons, and one counts the

{m a t h b b Z}_{r}

-orbits. Using Morse and Lusternik-Schnirelmann theories, we prove that if

r g e 3

is prime, then the number of

r

-periodic Finsler billiard trajectories is not less than

(r - 1) (d - 2) + 1

. We also give stronger lower bounds when

M

is in general position. The problem of estimating the number of periodic billiard trajectories from below goes back to Birkhoff. Our work extends to the Finsler setting the results previously obtained for Euclidean billiards by Babenko, Farber, Tabachnikov, and Karasev.

Review text

Let \(M\) be a strictly convex smooth closed hypersurface in a \(d\)-dimensional Finsler space with possibly irreversible Finsler metric. In particular, \(M\) is diffeomorphic to the sphere \(S^{d-1}\). The authors are interested in \(r\)-periodic Finsler billiard trajectories. These correspond to critical points of the length function \(\Lambda(x_1,\dots,x_r)=f(x_1,x_2)+\dots+f(x_r,x_1)\) where \(f\) denotes the distance in the Finsler space. The main theorem yields lower bounds on the number of \(\mathbb{Z}_r\)-orbits of \(r\)-periodic trajectories. It extends results in the Riemannian setting from [\textit{M.-C. Arnaud}, Nonlinearity 15, No. 6, 1755--1758 (2002; Zbl 1013.37032); \textit{M. Farber} and \textit{S. Tabachnikov}, Manuscr. Math. 108, No. 4, 431--437 (2002; Zbl 1087.37052); Topology 41, No. 3, 553--589 (2002; Zbl 1006.37038); \textit{R. N. Karasev}, Geom. Funct. Anal. 19, No. 2, 423--428 (2009; Zbl 1184.37031)]. The proofs are based on Morse and Lusternik-Schnirelmann theories.

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