Chaos in polygonal billiards

Series
Job Candidate Talk
Time
Monday, December 2, 2024 - 11:00am for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Francisco Arana-Herrera – University of Maryland – farana@umd.eduhttps://terpconnect.umd.edu/~farana/
Organizer
Asaf Katz

We discuss how chaos, i.e., sensitivity to initial conditions, arises in the setting of polygonal billiards. In particular, we give a complete classification of the rational polygons whose billiard flow is weak mixing in almost every direction, proving a longstanding conjecture of Gutkin. This is joint work with Jon Chaika and Giovanni Forni. No previous knowledge on the subject will be assumed.