Seminari del Dipartimento

 

Fisica Matematica

On Birkhoff conjecture for convex billiards

A. Sorrentino


12-04-2018 - 14:30
Largo San Leonardo Murialdo,1 - Pal.C - AULA 311

 

A mathematical billiard is a system describing the inertial motion of a point mass inside a domain, with elastic reflections at the boundary. This simple model has been first proposed by G.D. Birkhoff as a mathematical playground where "it the formal side, usually so formidable in dynamics, almost completely disappears and only the interesting qualitative questions need to be considered".
Since then billiards have captured much attention in many different contexts, becoming a very popular subject of investigation. Despite their apparently simple (local) dynamics, their qualitative dynamical properties are extremely non-local. This global influence on the dynamics translates into several intriguing rigidity phenomena, which are at the basis of several unanswered questions and conjectures.
In this talk I shall focus on some of these questions. In particular, I shall describe some recent results related to the classification of integrable billiards (also known as Birkhoff conjecture).
 
org: GIULIANI Alessandro