The circular restricted 4-body problem with three equal primaries in the collinear central configuration of the 3-body problem (Q2073327)

The paper considers the three-body collinear configuration with unit-mass primaries fixed at \((-1,0)\), \((0,0)\), and \((1,0)\) in a rotating coordinate scheme. The focus of the paper is the study of a fourth, massless particle within the gravitational influence of these three bodies. After describing the equations of motion for the system, the authors establish the existence of six equilibrium points of the configuration. The first four of these place all four bodies in a collinear configuration (similar to Lagrange points \(L_1\) through \(L_3\)), and the remaining two are located at \((0, \pm y)\) for suitable \(y\) (similar to Lagrange points \(L_4\) and \(L_5\)). Interestingly, unlike the Lagrange points, all of the equilibria are shown to be unstable. A study of the Hill's region for the problem is also given. In the last section of the paper, the authors study the periodic orbits bifurcating from the equilibrium points. It is shown that for the collinear equilibrium points there are families of periodic orbits through these points. However, these do not exist through the the non-collinear points. Additionally, there are nearly circular elliptic orbits that wind around a single primary. Lastly, orbits close to infinity are studied and shown to exist. A result of Stoica (2016) then shows that these orbits can be continued into the full \(4\)-body with three primaries and one body of small mass. The authors note up front that many of the results contained in the paper have been known since 1981, and that some can be seen as a special case of papers from 2011, 2016, and 2019. However, the study of the periodic orbits is new, and a review of the relevant results is a welcome inclusion.