The Geometry of Billiards in Ellipses and their Poncelet Grids

Abstract

The goal of this paper is an analysis of the geometry of billiards in ellipses, based on properties of confocal central conics. The extended sides of the billiards meet at points which are located on confocal ellipses and hyperbolas. They define the associated Poncelet grid. If a billiard is periodic then it closes for any choice of the initial vertex on the ellipse. This gives rise to a continuous variation of billiards which is called billiard's motion though it is neither a Euclidean nor a projective motion. The extension of this motion to the associated Poncelet grid leads to new insights and invariants.