1,509 research outputs found
Introducing symplectic billiards
In this article we introduce a simple dynamical system called symplectic
billiards. As opposed to usual/Birkhoff billiards, where length is the
generating function, for symplectic billiards symplectic area is the generating
function. We explore basic properties and exhibit several similarities, but
also differences of symplectic billiards to Birkhoff billiards.Comment: 41 pages, 16 figure
Upgrading the Local Ergodic Theorem for planar semi-dispersing billiards
The Local Ergodic Theorem (also known as the `Fundamental Theorem') gives
sufficient conditions under which a phase point has an open neighborhood that
belongs (mod 0) to one ergodic component. This theorem is a key ingredient of
many proofs of ergodicity for billiards and, more generally, for smooth
hyperbolic maps with singularities. However the proof of that theorem relies
upon a delicate assumption (Chernov-Sinai Ansatz), which is difficult to check
for some physically relevant models, including gases of hard balls. Here we
give a proof of the Local Ergodic Theorem for two dimensional billiards without
using the Ansatz.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure
(2+1) gravity for higher genus in the polygon model
We construct explicitly a (12g-12)-dimensional space P of unconstrained and
independent initial data for 't Hooft's polygon model of (2+1) gravity for
vacuum spacetimes with compact genus-g spacelike slices, for any g >= 2. Our
method relies on interpreting the boost parameters of the gluing data between
flat Minkowskian patches as the lengths of certain geodesic curves of an
associated smooth Riemann surface of the same genus. The appearance of an
initial big-bang or a final big-crunch singularity (but never both) is verified
for all configurations. Points in P correspond to spacetimes which admit a
one-polygon tessellation, and we conjecture that P is already the complete
physical phase space of the polygon model. Our results open the way for
numerical investigations of pure (2+1) gravity.Comment: 35 pages, 22 figure
High-frequency asymptotic compression of dense BEM matrices for general geometries without ray tracing
Wave propagation and scattering problems in acoustics are often solved with
boundary element methods. They lead to a discretization matrix that is
typically dense and large: its size and condition number grow with increasing
frequency. Yet, high frequency scattering problems are intrinsically local in
nature, which is well represented by highly localized rays bouncing around.
Asymptotic methods can be used to reduce the size of the linear system, even
making it frequency independent, by explicitly extracting the oscillatory
properties from the solution using ray tracing or analogous techniques.
However, ray tracing becomes expensive or even intractable in the presence of
(multiple) scattering obstacles with complicated geometries. In this paper, we
start from the same discretization that constructs the fully resolved large and
dense matrix, and achieve asymptotic compression by explicitly localizing the
Green's function instead. This results in a large but sparse matrix, with a
faster associated matrix-vector product and, as numerical experiments indicate,
a much improved condition number. Though an appropriate localisation of the
Green's function also depends on asymptotic information unavailable for general
geometries, we can construct it adaptively in a frequency sweep from small to
large frequencies in a way which automatically takes into account a general
incident wave. We show that the approach is robust with respect to non-convex,
multiple and even near-trapping domains, though the compression rate is clearly
lower in the latter case. Furthermore, in spite of its asymptotic nature, the
method is robust with respect to low-order discretizations such as piecewise
constants, linears or cubics, commonly used in applications. On the other hand,
we do not decrease the total number of degrees of freedom compared to a
conventional classical discretization. The combination of the ...Comment: 24 pages, 13 figure
Studies on Kernels of Simple Polygons
The kernel of a simple polygon is the set of points in its interior from which all points inside the polygon are visible. We formally establish that for a given convex polygon Q we can always construct a larger simple polygon with many reflex vertices such that Q is the kernel of P. We present algorithms for decomposing a strongly monotone polygon into star-polygons. This decomposition is applied for developing an efficient algorithm for placing a small number of vertical towers to cover the entire given 1.5D terrain. We also present an experimental investigation of the proposed algorithm. The implementation is done in the Java programming language and the resulting prototype supports a user-friendly interface
The Dynamics of Twisted Tent Maps
This paper is a study of the dynamics of a new family of maps from the
complex plane to itself, which we call twisted tent maps. A twisted tent map is
a complex generalization of a real tent map. The action of this map can be
visualized as the complex scaling of the plane followed by folding the plane
once. Most of the time, scaling by a complex number will "twist" the plane,
hence the name. The "folding" both breaks analyticity (and even smoothness) and
leads to interesting dynamics ranging from easily understood and highly
geometric behavior to chaotic behavior and fractals.Comment: 87 pages. This is my Ph.D. thesis from IUPU
Gluing and grazing bifurcations in periodically forced 2-dimensional integrate-and-fire models
In this work we consider a general class of 2-dimensional hybrid systems. Assuming that the system possesses an attracting equilibrium point, we show that, when periodically driven with a square-wave pulse, the system possesses a periodic orbit which may undergo smooth and nonsmooth grazing bifurcations. We perform a semi-rigorous study of the existence of periodic orbits for a particular model consisting of a leaky integrate-and-fire model with a dynamic threshold. We use the stroboscopic map, which in this context is a 2-dimensional piecewise-smooth discontinuous map. For some parameter values we are able to show that the map is a quasi-contraction possessing a (locally) unique maximin periodic orbit. We complement our analysis using advanced numerical techniques to provide a complete portrait of the dynamics as parameters are varied. We find that for some regions of the parameter space the model undergoes a cascade of gluing bifurcations, while for others the model shows multistability between orbits of different periodsPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
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