Billiards and Stars: Geometry and Dynamics
Date: 10 - 14 August 2026
Location: CIMAT
Event type: Conference
Organisers: Maxim Arnold (UT Dallas), Gil Bor (CIMAT), Boris Khesin, (Toronto), Michael Shapiro (MSU)
This conference will explore profound connections and reciprocal insights between the seemingly disparate fields of mathematical billiard dynamics and celestial mechanics. In both areas the geometric and symplectic tools play crucial role, and the description of periodic orbits, caustics and singularities of the solutions, conditions for the emergence of chaos often lead to the appearance of very general universal methods.
Fostering the cross-pollination of these two domains is the main goal of the conference. It is also informally devoted to the joint 70th birthday of the two finest specialists on those respective domains, billiards and celestial mechanics: Sergei Tabachnikov (PennState U) and Richard Montgomery (UC Santa Cruz).
The meeting will bring together researchers working at the intersection of geometry, dynamical systems, and mathematical physics, with applications to non- holonomic dynamics and theoretical robotics.
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