Nandor Simanyi (University of Alabama at Birmingham)

Title: 
Verifying Wojtkowski's Ergodicity Conjecture for Almost Every Falling Ball Model

Abstract: 
In the late 1990s, by Doma Szasz and myself, a powerful algebraic machinery was developed to successfully establish
first the complete hyperbolicity, then the ergodicity of certain billiard models. That technology, in its original form, was not directly suitable
to tackle similar problems for Wojtkowski's celebrated Systems of 1D Falling Balls under Gravity. Here we show how to adapt the original 
algebraic approach to such systems, verifying at last Wojtkowski's old ergodicity conjecture for typical falling ball systems.