Unbounded Orbits for Outer Billiards

dc.creatorSchwartz, Richard Evan
dc.date2007-02-03
dc.date2007-02-24
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T07:48:18Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T07:48:18Z
dc.descriptionOuter billiards is a basic dynamical system, defined relative to a planar convex shape. This system was introduced in the 1950's by B.H. Neumann and later popularized in the 1970's by J. Moser. All along, one of the central questions has been: is there an outer billiards system with an unbounded orbit. We answer this question by proving that outer billiards defined relative to the Penrose Kite has an unbounded orbit. The Penrose kite is the quadrilateral that appears in the famous Penrose tiling. We also analyze some of the finer orbit structure of outer billiards on the penrose kite. This analysis shows that there is an uncountable set of unbounded orbits. Our method of proof relates the problem to self-similar tilings, polygon exchange maps, and arithmetic dynamics.
dc.description65 pages, computer-aided proof. Auxilliary program, Billiard King, available from author's website. Latest version is essentially the same as earlier versions, but with minor improvements and many typos fixed
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/math/0702073
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/math/0702073
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/124451
dc.subjectDynamical Systems
dc.titleUnbounded Orbits for Outer Billiards
dc.typetext

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