On skew loops, skew branes and quadratic hypersurfaces

A skew brane is an immersed codimension 2 submanifold in affine space, free from pairs of parallel tangent spaces. Using Morse theory, we prove that a skew brane cannot lie on a quadratic hypersurface. We also prove that there are no skew loops on embedded ruled developable discs in 3-space. The paper extends recent work by M. Ghomi and B. Solomon.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

Remarks on magnetic flows and magnetic billiards, Finsler metrics and a magnetic analog of Hilbert's fourth problem

We interpret magnetic billiards as Finsler ones and describe an analog of the string construction for magnetic billiards. Finsler billiards for which the law "angle of incidence equals angle of reflection" are described. We characterize the Finsler metrics in the plane whose geodesics are circles of a fixed radius. This is a magnetic analog of Hilbert's fourth problem asking to describe the Finsler metrics whose geodesics are straight lines.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figure

On three-periodic trajectories of multi-dimensional dual billiards

We consider the dual billiard map with respect to a smooth strictly convex closed hypersurface in linear 2m-dimensional symplectic space and prove that it has at least 2m distinct 3-periodic orbits.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol3/agt-3-33.abs.htm

The Six Circles Theorem revisited

The Six Circles Theorem of C. Evelyn, G. Money-Coutts, and J. Tyrrell concerns chains of circles inscribed into a triangle: the first circle is inscribed in the first angle, the second circle is inscribed in the second angle and tangent to the first circle, the third circle is inscribed in the third angle and tangent to the second circle, and so on, cyclically. The theorem asserts that if all the circles touch the sides of the triangle, and not their extensions, then the chain is 6-periodic. We show that, in general, the chain is eventually 6-periodic but may have an arbitrarily long pre-period.Comment: edited for better expositio