Periodic trajectories in 3-dimensional convex billiards

Abstract

We give a lower bound on the number of periodic billiard trajectories inside a generic smooth strictly convex closed surface in 3-space: for odd n, there are at least 2(n-1) such trajectories. Convex plane billiards were studied by G. Birkhoff, and the case of higher dimensional billiards is considered in our previous papers. We apply a topological approach based on the calculation of cohomology of certain configuration spaces of points on 2-sphere.