Cutting sequences, regular polygons, and the Veech group

Abstract

We describe the cutting sequences associated to geodesic flow on regular polygons, in terms of a combinatorial process called "derivation." This work is an extension of some of the ideas and results in Smillie and Ulcigrai's recent paper, where the analysis was made for the regular octagon. It turns out that the main structural properties of the octagon generalize in a natural way.