Billiard Trajectories inside Cones

    2025, Volume 30, Number 4, pp.  688-710

    Author(s): Mironov A. E., Yin S.

    Recently it was proved that every billiard trajectory inside a $C^3$ convex cone has a finite number of reflections. Here, by a $C^3$ convex cone, we mean a cone whose section with some hyperplane is a strictly convex, closed $C^3$ hypersurface of that hyperplane, with an everywhere nondegenerate second fundamental form. In this paper, we prove that there exist $C^2$ convex cones with billiard trajectories that undergo infinitely many reflections in finite time. We also provide an estimation of the number of reflections for billiard trajectories inside elliptic cones in $\mathbb{R}^3$ using two first integrals.
    Keywords: Birkhoff billiards, cone billiards
    Citation: Mironov A. E., Yin S., Billiard Trajectories inside Cones, Regular and Chaotic Dynamics, 2025, Volume 30, Number 4, pp. 688-710



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