Special flows over some locally rigid automorphisms and under L² ceiling functions satisfying a local L² Denjoy-Koksma type inequality are considered. Such flows are proved to be disjoint (in the sense of Furstenberg) from mixing flows and (under some stronger assumption) from weakly mixing flows for which the weak closure of the set of all instances consists of indecomposable Markov operators. As applications we prove that ∙ special flows built over ergodic interval exchange...

We give a positive answer to the problem of existence of smooth weakly mixing but not mixing flows on some surfaces. More precisely, on each compact connected surface whose Euler characteristic is even and negative we construct smooth weakly mixing flows which are disjoint in the sense of Furstenberg from all mixing flows and from all Gaussian flows.

A planar polygonal billiard $𝒫$ is said to have the finite blocking property if for every pair $(O,A)$ of points in $𝒫$ there exists a finite number of “blocking” points $B_1,\cdots ,B_n$ such that every billiard trajectory from $O$ to $A$ meets one of the $B_i$’s. Generalizing our construction of a counter-example to a theorem of Hiemer and Snurnikov, we show that the only regular polygons that have the finite blocking property are the square, the equilateral triangle and the hexagon. Then we extend this result to translation surfaces....