42 research outputs found
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
Proving The Ergodic Hypothesis for Billiards With Disjoint Cylindric Scatterers
In this paper we study the ergodic properties of mathematical billiards
describing the uniform motion of a point in a flat torus from which finitely
many, pairwise disjoint, tubular neighborhoods of translated subtori (the so
called cylindric scatterers) have been removed. We prove that every such system
is ergodic (actually, a Bernoulli flow), unless a simple geometric obstacle for
the ergodicity is present.Comment: 24 pages, AMS-TeX fil
Heat transport in stochastic energy exchange models of locally confined hard spheres
We study heat transport in a class of stochastic energy exchange systems that
characterize the interactions of networks of locally trapped hard spheres under
the assumption that neighbouring particles undergo rare binary collisions. Our
results provide an extension to three-dimensional dynamics of previous ones
applying to the dynamics of confined two-dimensional hard disks [Gaspard P &
Gilbert T On the derivation of Fourier's law in stochastic energy exchange
systems J Stat Mech (2008) P11021]. It is remarkable that the heat conductivity
is here again given by the frequency of energy exchanges. Moreover the
expression of the stochastic kernel which specifies the energy exchange
dynamics is simpler in this case and therefore allows for faster and more
extensive numerical computations.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figure
The characteristic exponents of the falling ball model
We study the characteristic exponents of the Hamiltonian system of () point masses freely falling in the vertical half line
under constant gravitation and colliding with each other and
the solid floor elastically. This model was introduced and first studied
by M. Wojtkowski. Hereby we prove his conjecture: All relevant characteristic
(Lyapunov) exponents of the above dynamical system are nonzero, provided that
(i. e. the masses do not increase as we go up) and
Approximating multi-dimensional Hamiltonian flows by billiards
Consider a family of smooth potentials , which, in the limit
, become a singular hard-wall potential of a multi-dimensional
billiard. We define auxiliary billiard domains that asymptote, as
to the original billiard, and provide asymptotic expansion of
the smooth Hamiltonian solution in terms of these billiard approximations. The
asymptotic expansion includes error estimates in the norm and an
iteration scheme for improving this approximation. Applying this theory to
smooth potentials which limit to the multi-dimensional close to ellipsoidal
billiards, we predict when the separatrix splitting persists for various types
of potentials
Recurrence and higher ergodic properties for quenched random Lorentz tubes in dimension bigger than two
We consider the billiard dynamics in a non-compact set of R^d that is
constructed as a bi-infinite chain of translated copies of the same
d-dimensional polytope. A random configuration of semi-dispersing scatterers is
placed in each copy. The ensemble of dynamical systems thus defined, one for
each global realization of the scatterers, is called `quenched random Lorentz
tube'. Under some fairly general conditions, we prove that every system in the
ensemble is hyperbolic and almost every system is recurrent, ergodic, and
enjoys some higher chaotic properties.Comment: Final version for J. Stat. Phys., 18 pages, 4 figure