Sinai billiards

A Sinai billiard is a dynamical system obtained by a billiard ball moving in a bounded flat region with concave or flat boundaries. Without external field, such systems are often chaotic. With gravity turned on, part of the phase space can show quasiperiodic behavior. For example, in a square box with a circular scatterer in the the center, then for sufficiently large gravitational constant and bounded kinetic energy, the particle can no more reach the scatterer.

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© 2000, Oliver Knill , dynamical-systems.org