Shortest Minkowski billiard trajectories on convex bodies

Abstract

We rigorously investigate closed Minkowski/Finsler billiard trajectories on $n$-dimensional convex bodies. We outline the central properties in comparison and differentiation from the Euclidean special case and establish two main results for length-minimizing closed Minkowski/Finsler billiard trajectories: one is a regularity result, the other is of geometric nature. Building on these results, we develop an algorithm for computing length-minimizing closed Minkowski/Finsler billiard trajectories in the plane.

67 pages, 17 figures, 1 table