Abstract
We consider periodic billiard trajectories in a regular pentagon. It is known that the trajectory is periodic if and only if the tangent of the angle formed by the trajectory and the side of the pentagon belongs to (sin36°)Q[v√5]- Moreover, for every such direction, the lengths of the trajectories, both geometric and combinatorial, take precisely two values. In this paper, we provide a full computation of these lengths as well as a full description of the corresponding symbolic orbits. We also formulate results and conjectures regarding the billiards in other regular polygons.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 439-461 |
Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | Moscow Mathematical Journal |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 3 |
State | Published - Aug 5 2011 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Mathematics(all)