Billiards within confocal quadrics and beyond

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This project aims to analyse mathematical billiards within domains bounded by confocal conics. Mathematical billiards have applications in any situation that involves collisions and reflections, and any phenomenon that includes reflections and collisions can be modelled using mathematical billiards. This project aims to revolutionise the analysis of billiards within domains bounded by several confocal conics by exploring the relations of such billiards with polygonal billiards, and making research advances with the higher-dimensional generalisations within confocal quadrics and their relations with billiards within polyhedra. The project will link several significant areas of scientific work including polygonal billiards, classical integrable systems, Teichmuller spaces, and relativity theory. The project outcomes will have impact across areas of mathematics such as geometry, algebraic geometry, and dynamical systems.