School of Mathematics Colloquium

Poncelet porism and elliptical billiards

by Prof. Milena Radnovic (Mathematics Inst. SANU, Serbia)

Thursday, October 11, 2012 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at Colaba Campus ( AG-69 )
Description
Suppose that two conics are given in the plane, together with a
closed polygonal line inscribed
in one of them and circumscribed about the other one. Then, Poncelet
porism states that infinitely many
such closed polygonal lines exist - every point of the first conic is a
vertex of such a polygon.
In the talk, the most important results and ideas around Poncelet porism,
both classical and modern,
together with their historical origins and natural generalizations will be
presented. We will particularly
pay attention to applications in billiard dynamics including
higher-dimesional cases.