Isoperiodic families of Poncelet polygons inscribed in a circle and circumscribed about conics from a confocal pencil

arXiv2103.01215MaRDI QIDQ6504388FDOQ6504388

Authors: Vladimir Dragović, Milena Radnović 

Abstract: We study Poncelet polygons inscribed in a given boundary conic and tangent to conics from a confocal pencil, when the boundary does not belong to the pencil. This question naturally arose in the study of the numerical range and Blaschke products. We compare and contrast the obtained results with the case when the boundary belongs to the confocal pencil of caustics, which was studied before, in particular in the study of elliptical billiards. We examine the monotonicity of rotation numbers argument and observe deficiencies in typical ways such arguments were used. We derive and use Cayley-type conditions to fill the gaps in the existing proofs and derive more general statements. We discover confocal families of conics with the property that each conic from the family is a caustic for $k$-Poncelet polygons inscribed in the circle, with the same $k$. For $k=4$ we characterize all such families. Then, we relate them to solutions to Painlev'e VI equations. We prove that such families do not exist for $ke4$.

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Painlevé and other special ordinary differential equations in the complex domain; classification, hierarchies (34M55) Dynamical systems involving one-parameter continuous families of measure-preserving transformations (37A10) Relationships between algebraic curves and integrable systems (14H70) Completely integrable discrete dynamical systems (37J70)

This page was built for publication: Isoperiodic families of Poncelet polygons inscribed in a circle and circumscribed about conics from a confocal pencil

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q6504388)