Rupak Chatterjee, A.D. Jackson, and N.L. Balazs
Rigid Body Motion, Interacting Billiards, and
Billiards on Curved Manifolds
(320K, LaTex)

ABSTRACT.  It is shown that the free motion of any three-dimensional
rigid body colliding elastically between two parallel, flat walls
is equivalent to a three-dimensional billiard system. Depending
upon the inertial parameters of the problem, the billiard system
may possess a potential energy field and a non-Euclidean
configuration space. The corresponding curvilinear motion of the
billiard ball does not necessarily lead to a decrease
of the stable periodic orbits found in the analogous
rectilinear system.