Том 24, № 1 (2019)

A comprehensive analysis of periodic trajectories of billiards within ellipses in the Euclidean plane is presented. The novelty of the approach is based on a relationship recently established by the authors between periodic billiard trajectories and extremal polynomials on the systems of d intervals on the real line and ellipsoidal billiards in d-dimensional space. Even in the planar case systematically studied in the present paper, it leads to new results in characterizing n periodic trajectories vs. so-called n elliptic periodic trajectories, which are n-periodic in elliptical coordinates. The characterizations are done both in terms of the underlying elliptic curve and divisors on it and in terms of polynomial functional equations, like Pell’s equation. This new approach also sheds light on some classical results. In particular, we connect the search for caustics which generate periodic trajectories with three classical classes of extremal polynomials on two intervals, introduced by Zolotarev and Akhiezer. The main classifying tool are winding numbers, for which we provide several interpretations, including one in terms of numbers of points of alternance of extremal polynomials. The latter implies important inequality between the winding numbers, which, as a consequence, provides another proof of monotonicity of rotation numbers. A complete catalog of billiard trajectories with small periods is provided for n = 3, 4, 5, 6 along with an effective search for caustics. As a byproduct, an intriguing connection between Cayley-type conditions and discriminantly separable polynomials has been observed for all those small periods.

We consider a pair of opposite vortices moving on the surface of the triaxial ellipsoid E(a, b, c): x²/a+ y²/b+ z²/c = 1, a < b < c. The equations of motion are transported to S² ×S² via a conformal map that combines confocal quadric coordinates for the ellipsoid and sphero-conical coordinates in the sphere. The antipodal pairs form an invariant submanifold for the dynamics. We characterize the linear stability of the equilibrium pairs at the three axis endpoints.

A self-similar reduction of the Korteweg–de Vries hierarchy is considered. A linear system of equations associated with this hierarchy is presented. This Lax pair can be used to solve the Cauchy problem for the studied hierarchy. It is shown that special solutions of the self-similar reduction of the KdV hierarchy are determined via the transcendents of the first Painlevé hierarchy. Rational solutions are expressed by means of the Yablonskii–Vorob’ev polynomials. The map of the solutions for the second Painlevé hierarchy into the solutions for the self-similar reduction of the KdV hierarchy is illustrated using the Miura transformation. Lax pairs for equations of the hierarchy for the Yablonskii–Vorob’ev polynomial are discussed. Special solutions to the hierarchy for the Yablonskii–Vorob’ev polynomials are given. Some other hierarchies with properties of the Painlevé hierarchies are presented. The list of nonlinear differential equations whose general solutions are expressed in terms of nonclassical functions is extended.

In this paper the dynamics of a Chaplygin sleigh like system are investigated. The system consists a of a Chaplygin sleigh with an internal rotor connected by a torsional spring, which is possibly non-Hookean. The problem is motivated by applications in robotics, where the motion of a nonholonomic system is sought to be controlled by modifying or tuning the stiffness associated with some degrees of freedom of the system. The elastic potential modifies the dynamics of the system and produces two possible stable paths in the plane, a straight line and a circle, each of which corresponds to fixed points in a reduced velocity space. Two different elastic potentials are considered in this paper, a quadratic potential and a Duffing like quartic potential. The stiffness of the elastic element, the relative inertia of the main body and the internal rotor and the initial energy of the system are all bifurcation parameters. Through numerics, we investigate the codimension-one bifurcations of the fixed points while holding all the other bifurcation parameters fixed. The results show the possibility of controlling the dynamics of the sleigh and executing different maneuvers by tuning the stiffness of the spring.