Linear and nonlinear stability of periodic orbits in annular billiards

Carl P Dettmann, Vitaly Fain

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

An annular billiard is a dynamical system in which a particle moves freely in a disk except for elastic collisions with the boundary, and also a circular scatterer in the interior of the disk. We investigate stability properties of some periodic orbits in annular billiards in which the scatterer is touching or close to the boundary. We analytically show that there exist linearly stable periodic orbits of arbitrary period for scatterers with decreasing radii that are located near the boundary of the disk. As the position of the scatterer moves away from a symmetry line of a periodic orbit, the stability of periodic orbits changes from elliptic to hyperbolic, corresponding to a saddle-center bifurcation. When the scatterer is tangent to the boundary, the periodic orbit is parabolic. We prove that slightly changing the reflection angle of the orbit in the tangential situation leads to the existence of KAM islands. Thus we show that there exists a decreasing to zero sequence of open intervals of scatterer radii, along which the billiard table is not ergodic.
Original languageEnglish
Article number043106
Number of pages10
JournalChaos
Volume27
Early online date11 Apr 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2017

Keywords

  • Orbital dynamics
  • Bifurications
  • Inequalities
  • Nonlinear scattering
  • Statistical mechanics models

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