Linear stability of elliptic relative equilibria of restricted four-body problem (Q2184700)

The authors study the linear stability of the elliptic relative equilibria of the restricted 4-body problem, where the three primary bodies form a Lagrangian triangle and the fourth body possesses zero mass. By reduction, the linearized Poincaré map is decomposed into the essential part, the Keplerian part and the elliptic Lagrangian part. The last two parts have been studied in the literature. The authors study via index theory the linear stability of the essential part according to the values of the mass parameters \(\alpha\) and \(\beta\) and the eccentricity \(e\in [0,1)\). They briefly introduce the normal forms of the symplectic matrices and the \(\omega\)-Maslov index theory of symplectic paths. By using the \(\omega\)-Maslov index and linear differential operator theory, they obtain the full bifurcation diagram of linearly stable and unstable regions with respect to the \(\alpha\), \(\beta\) and \(e\). Two linearly stable sub-regions are found.