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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Benjamini, Itai, Shamov, Alexander, Weiss, Barak
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.23575
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author Benjamini, Itai
Shamov, Alexander
Weiss, Barak
author_facet Benjamini, Itai
Shamov, Alexander
Weiss, Barak
contents We present an open problem about non-colliding freely moving hard disks in the Euclidean plane, together with related positive and negative partial results. The open problem is stated in a non-degenerate form: velocities are required to be pairwise distinct and their speeds are required to be uniformly bounded away from infinity. The positive deterministic result gives a bounded, injective, non-colliding velocity assignment for the integer lattice; after a common velocity shift, the speeds are also bounded away from zero. The negative result shows that no bounded continuous vector field on the whole plane can serve as a universal assignment satisfying the same separation inequality for all pairs of points at distance greater than one. We also record a space-time interpretation of the problem, relate it to packings by nonparallel cylinders in three dimensions, and formulate a corresponding topological-dynamical question for cylinder packings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_23575
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Non-colliding billiards in the plane
Benjamini, Itai
Shamov, Alexander
Weiss, Barak
Dynamical Systems
We present an open problem about non-colliding freely moving hard disks in the Euclidean plane, together with related positive and negative partial results. The open problem is stated in a non-degenerate form: velocities are required to be pairwise distinct and their speeds are required to be uniformly bounded away from infinity. The positive deterministic result gives a bounded, injective, non-colliding velocity assignment for the integer lattice; after a common velocity shift, the speeds are also bounded away from zero. The negative result shows that no bounded continuous vector field on the whole plane can serve as a universal assignment satisfying the same separation inequality for all pairs of points at distance greater than one. We also record a space-time interpretation of the problem, relate it to packings by nonparallel cylinders in three dimensions, and formulate a corresponding topological-dynamical question for cylinder packings.
title Non-colliding billiards in the plane
topic Dynamical Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.23575