No label defined (Q4329396)

This paper is concerned with the study of central configurations in the gravitational \(N\)-body problem described by the equations \( m_i r_i'' = U_{r_i}, (i=1, \ldots ,N), (1) \) where \(U\) is the Newtonian potential energy function given by \( U= \sum_{1 \leq i <j \leq N} m_i m_j / \| r_i -r_j \| \), where \( m_i\) are the masses of the particles, \( r_i\) are the position vectors, and \( \| \cdot \|\) denotes the Euclidean norm. In this context a solution of the differential system (1) \( r_i = r_i(t), i=1, \ldots ,N\) is called a central configuration if \( r_i''(t)= \lambda r_i(t)\) holds for some scalar function \( \lambda = \lambda (t)\) for all \(i\) and all \(t\). In the case of central configurations of \(N\)-body problem in a space of dimension \(N-2\), the equations of central configurations can be described in terms of the \( N(N-1)/2 \) mutual distances \( r_{ij} = \| r_i - r_j \| \) by means of two sets of algebraic equations. In the paper under consideration, by using symbolic computation techniques, the author studies the central configurations of the planar 4-body problem in the case of equal masses, and of the spatial 5-body problem also with equal masses. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0979.00032].