Acceleration in a nonplanar time-dependent billiard.

We study the dynamical properties of a particle in a nonplanar square billiard. The plane of the billiard has a sinusoidal shape. We consider both the static and time-dependent plane. We study the affect of different parameters that control the geometry of the billiard in this model. We consider variations of different parameters of the model and describe how the particle trajectory is affected by these parameters. We also investigate the dynamical behavior of the system in the static condition using its reduced phase plot and show that the dynamics of the particle inside the billiard may be regular, mixed, or chaotic. Finally, the problem of the particle energy growth is studied in the billiard with the time-dependent plane. We show that when in the static case, the billiard is chaotic, then the particle energy in the time-dependent billiard grows for a small number of collisions, and then it starts to saturate. But when the dynamics of the static case is regular, then the particle average energy in the time-dependent situation stays constant.