Site menu:
Hello and welcome to my homepage!
I am a research visitor at the MPIPKS in Dresden Germany since October 2011
and belong to the Dynamical Systems and Social Dynamics research group.
BSc (Hons) Mathematical Physics (Nottingham University 2007)
PhD in Applied Mathematics (Bristol University 2011)
My PhD supervisor was Carl Dettmann
Nationality: Greek Cypriot
Research Interests
I am interested in the escape properties of open non-uniformly hyperbolic Dynamical systems. Open here referes to systems whose content may escape through some prespecified hole. Such investigations are both of mathematical and physical interest as they offer a kind of spectroscopy into the corresponding closed system's dynamics. This research topic originates from different chapters of chaotic dynamics such as statistical mechanics and ergodic theory, where it is often more useful to think in terms of the macroscopic observable behaviours rather than particular microscopic states.
The main focus of my PhD was in mathematical billiards. They have provided a strong and fascinating basis for studying dynamical systems as they exhibit all sorts of dynamical behaviours (regular, chaotic and mixed). The various geometries of the billiards and their low dimensionality, allows for the in-depth understanding of the manifested chaos. Specifically, I concentrate on 'escape' and 'transport' problems, where a particle is allowed to enter and exit the billiard from some pre-specified regions. The survival probability is then a useful statistical property that can be used to characterize and classify various geometries into relevant categories. I obtain exact expression for their survival probability, hence allowing for accurate predictions but also calibration of various relevant distributions. The wide range of applications of open billiards includes statistical mechanics, micro-lasers in optical cavities and acoustics. The main reason for this being that billiard dynamics (ray-tracing) is the classical limit (small wavelength) of the wave equations for light, sound or quantum particles. Hence, billiards are a good model for understanding the delicate correspondence between classical and quantum dynamics.
More recently I have been interested in the impact of boundaries on fully connected random geometric networks. This research topic has strong mathematical connections to percolation theory and has recently received much attention in the area of wireless communications and multi-hop radio networks.
Contact Details
Email: orestis@pks.mpg.de
URL: http://www.pks.mpg.de/~orestis/
Phone: +49 351 871-2221
Fax: currently not available
Mailing address: Max-Planck-Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Nöthnitzer Straße 38, 01187, Dresden, Germany