Piecewise Isometric Maps

Catalog description

This class will cover a variety of topics, all more or less related to dynamical systems that are defined by piecewise isometric maps. Topics may include:polygonal billiards and flat cone surfaces; outer billiards; interval exchange maps; The Gauss map and continued fractions; aperiodic tilings, such as the Penrose tiling; cut and paste theorems about polyhedra; and Ashwin's conjecture about piecewise rotation maps. A fairly large part of the class will be devoted to the explanation of the instructor's proof of the Moser-Neumann conjecture for outer billiards. For this part, the instructor will use his book on the subject. For other parts of the course, a variety of sources will be used.