Conjecture on periodic orbits in no-slip billiards with external force

A no-slip billiard is a billiard system in which collisions with the boundary exchange tangential and normal velocity according to the no-slip collision rule. An accessible point is a point of the table that can be reached by a billiard trajectory. A path-reversing periodic orbit retraces its path after a collision. A wedge is the region between two intersecting boundary rays.

Periodic-orbit conjecture. For a no-slip billiard with an external force, 22-periodic non-path-reversing orbits exist between any two accessible points on an arbitrary table, and isolated higher-order periodic orbits exist between accessible points on a wedge.

These are experimentally suggested possibilities extending the known family of path-reversing 22-periodic orbits; the source does not establish either assertion.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Jan Ahmed, Timothy Chumley, Scott Cook, Christopher Cox, Hakiem Grant, Nicholas Petela, Bethany Rothrock and Ridnald Xhafaj, “Dynamics of the no-slip Galton board”, arXiv:2208.07790 (2022).

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