Conformal transformations and integrable mechanical billiards

Abstract

In this article we explain that several integrable mechanical billiards in the plane are connected via conformal transformations. We first remark that the free billiards in the plane are conformal equivalent to infinitely many billiard systems defined in central force problems on a particular fixed energy level. We then explain that the classical Hooke-Kepler correspondence can be carried over to a correspondence between integrable Hooke-Kepler billiards. As part of the conclusion we show that any focused conic section gives rise to integrable Kepler billiards, which continues previous works of Panov [26] and Gallavotti-Jauslin [11]. We discuss several generalizations of integrable Stark billiards. We also show that any finite combinations of confocal conic sections give rise to integrable billiard systems of Euler's two-center problems.