dr Tyll Krueger (University of Bielefeld, Faculty of Physics)

Billiards

Abstract: the talk is intended to give a short overview about the theory of billiards. Billiard theory as a subfield of the theory of dynamical systems deals with far reaching mathematical idealization and generalization of real billiards. Besides their importance as basic models for classical statistical mechanics (Boltzmann ergodic hypothesis), billiards also provide some of the best understood examples of Hamiltonian systems. They show a very rich spectrum of dynamical structures reaching from integrable dynamics to completely chaotic behavior. The talk will present some of the prime results for various classes of billiards including dispersing and semidispersing billiards, polygonal billiards and quantum billiards. No practical knowledge in playing billiards is required nor will it be provided in the talk.