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Liouville billiard tables and an inverse spectral result

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2003

G. POPOV
Affiliation:
Université de Nantes, Département de Mathématiques, UMR 6629 du CNRS, 2, rue de la Houssinière, BP 92208, 44072 Nantes, Cedex 03, France
P. TOPALOV
Affiliation:
Institute of Mathematics, BAS, Acad. G. Bonchev Str., bl. 8, Sofia 1113, Bulgaria
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Abstract

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We consider a class of billiard tables (X,g), where X is a smooth compact manifold of dimension two with smooth boundary \partial X and g is a smooth Riemannian metric on X, the billiard flow of which is completely integrable. The billiard table (X,g) is defined by means of a special double cover with two branched points and it admits a group of isometries G \cong \mathbb{Z}_2 \times\mathbb{Z}_2. Its boundary can be characterized by the string property; namely, the sum of distances from any point of \partial X to the branched points is constant. We provide examples of such billiard tables in the plane (elliptical regions), on the sphere \mathbf{S}^2,on the hyperbolic space \mathbf{H}^2, and on quadrics. The main result is that the spectrum of the corresponding Laplace–Beltrami operator with Robin boundary conditions involving a smooth function K on \partial X uniquely determines the function K, provided that K is invariant under the action of G.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2003 Cambridge University Press