Entire parabolic trajectories as minimal phase transitions (Q2636870)

The authors consider mechanical systems of the form \(\ddot{x} = \nabla V(x) \), defined on \(\mathbb R^n \backslash \chi\), where \(n \geq 2\) and \(\chi\) is the collision set. These corresponds to motion with energy \(E(x,\dot{x}) = (1/2) (\dot{x})^2 - V(x)\). They assume moreover that the inferior limit (or the minimum) for \(V(x)\) is zero. A parabolic trajectory is a collision-less solution with \(E=0\). (The Kepler problem corresponds to \(V(x) = 1/|x|\), and \(E=0\) gives trajectories which are parabolas.) Parabolic trajectories play a central role in celestial mechanics and in the study of singular Hamiltonian systems, and have thus been widely studied, in particular, by variational methods. The paper provides a new variational approach for the characterization of such trajectories in the case of homogeneous potentials. In particular, the authors consider the case where the potential \(V\) is homogeneous of degree \(\alpha\) with \(0 < \alpha < 2\). They focus on parabolic trajectories having asymptotic trajectories at infinity and which, in addition, are Morse minimizing for the Jacobi metric (these are structurally unstable and can appear only for a codimension-one submanifold of these potentials). A variational characterization of these is provided, in terms of a parameter-free minimizer of an associated obstacle problem. A wealth of general results is given, together with proofs of background results.