Boundary-condition-varying circle billiards and gratings: the Dirichlet singularity

Waves in a two-dimensional domain with Robin (mixed) boundary conditions that vary smoothly along the boundary exhibit unexpected phenomena. If the variation includes a 'D point' where the boundary condition is Dirichlet (vanishing wavefunction), a variety of arguments indicate that the system is singular. For a circle billiard, the boundary condition fails to determine a discrete set of levels, so the spectrum is continuous. For a diffraction grating defined by periodically varying boundary conditions on the edge of a half-plane, the phase of a diffracted beam amplitude remains undetermined. In both cases, the wavefunction on the boundary has a singularity at a D point, described by the polylogarithm function.