A Piecewise Smooth Fermi-Ulam Pingpong with Potential

Abstract

In this paper we study a Fermi-Ulam model where a pingpong bounces elastically against a periodically oscillating platform in a gravity field. We assume that the platform motion $f(t)$ is piecewise $C^3$ with a singularity $\dot{f}(0+)\ne \dot{f}(1-)$. If the second derivative of the platform motion is either always positive $\ddot{f}(t)>0$ or always $\ddot{f}(t)<-g$ where $g$ is the gravitational constant, then the escaping orbits constitute a null set and the system is recurrent. However, under these assumptions, escaping orbits coexist with bounded orbits at arbitrarily high energy level.