Bicycle tracks with hyperbolic monodromy -- results and conjectures

Abstract

We find new necessary and sufficient conditions for the bicycling monodromy of a closed plane curve to be hyperbolic. Our main tool is the ``hyperbolic development" interpretation of the bicycling monodromy of plane curves. Based on computer experiments, we pose two conjectures concerning the bicycling monodromy of strictly convex closed plane curves.