Non-Birkhoff periodic orbits in symmetric billiards

Abstract We study non-Birkhoff periodic orbits in symmetric convex planar billiards. Our main result provides a quantitative criterion for the existence of such orbits with prescribed minimal period, rotation number, and spatiotemporal symmetry. We exploit this criterion to find sufficient conditions for a symmetric billiard to possess infinitely many non-Birkhoff periodic orbits. It follows that arbitrarily small analytical perturbations of the circular billiard have non-Birkhoff periodic orbits of any rational rotation number and with arbitrarily long periods. We also generalize a known result for elliptical billiards to other $$\mathbb {D}_2$$ D 2 -symmetric billiards. Lastly, we provide MATLAB codes which can be used to numerically compute and visualize the non-Birkhoff periodic orbits whose existence we prove analytically.