Using integrability to produce chaos: Billiards with positive entropy

A new open class of convex 2 dimensional planar billiards with positive Lyapunov exponent almost everywhere is constructed. We introduce the notion of a focusing arc and show that such arcs can be used to build billiard systems with positive Lyapunov exponents. We prove that under smallC⁶ perturbations, focusing arcs remain focusing and thereby show that perturbations of the Bunimovich stadium billiard have positive Lyapunov exponents.Partially supported by NSF grant DMS 8806067