Jean-Christophe Yoccoz

Jean-Christophe Yoccoz

Jean-Christophe Yoccoz is a French Mathematician currently at the College de France. His works have given fundamental contributions in the theory of dynamical systems. He is an excellent chess player and he occasionally spends half a day on mathematical "experiments", by hand or by computer. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1994.

 

"Translations surfaces and their geodesics": In a rectangular billiard with no friction, orbits are either periodic or equidistributed. The study of such billiards is very related to the study of rotations on a circle. In general, the study of the dynamics of a polygonal billiard table whose angles are commensurable to \pi leads to fascinating dynamical objects (interval exchanges) and geometrical objects (translation surfaces). We shall try to give an overview of this topic.

Slides (morning lecture)

Slides (afternoon lecture)