Continuation of relative periodic orbits in a class of triatomic Hamiltonian systems (Q2272068)

The authors study relative periodic orbits in a class of triatomic Euclidean-invariant Hamiltonian systems which consist of two identical heavy atoms and a light one, and the atomic mass ratio is treated as a continuation parameter. Under some nondegeneracy conditions, they show that a given family of relative periodic orbits existing at infinite mass ratio (and parametrized by phase, rotational degree of freedom and period) persists for sufficiently large mass ratio and for nearby angular velocities. The proof is based on a method for the continuation of normal periodic orbits in Hamiltonian systems. Reviewer's remark: I think the authors' results are good, because they provide several types of relative periodic orbits, which extended from small amplitude relative normal modes up to large amplitude solutions which are not restrained to a small neighborhood of a stable relative equilibrium. In particular, they show the existence of large amplitude motions of inversion, where the light atom periodically crosses the segment between heavy atoms, and this analysis is completed by numerical results on the stability and bifurcations of some inversion orbits as their angular velocity is varied.