Linear stability of elliptic relative equilibria of four-body problem with two infinitesimal masses (Q6049877)

The \textit{\(n\)-body problem} describes the motion of \(n\) particles of positive masses under their mutual Newtonian gravitational forces, is the main problem of the classical Celestial Mechanics. The equations that govern the motion of the planar \(n\)-body problem are given by \[ \ddot q_i = \sum_{j=1,\,\,j\ne i}^n \frac{m_j(q_j-q_i)}{r_{ij}^3}, \quad \mbox{for} \quad i=1,\dots,n,\tag{1} \] where \(q_i\in\mathbb{R}^2\) are the position vectors of the \(i\)-th body with mass \(m_i\), and \(r_{ij} = |q_i-q_j|\) is the Euclidean distance between the \(i\)-th and \(j\)-th bodies, and \(m_i\) are their masses. Here we take the unit of time in such a way that the Newtonian gravitational constant be one. Let \(c = \frac{1}{M}(m_1q_1+\dots + m_nq_n)\) be the total mass and center of mass of the bodies. A configuration \(q=(q_1,q_2,\dots, q_n)\) of the \(n\)-body problem is called \textit{central} when the acceleration of each body is proportional to the position vector of the body with respect to the center of mass. This is formulated as \[ \sum_{j\neq i} \dfrac{m_j(q_j-q_i)}{r_{ij}^3}+ \lambda (q_i-c)=0, \qquad i=1,\dots, n. \] A planar central configuration of the \(n\)-body problem gives rise to solutions in which each particle moves on a specific Keplerian orbit while the totality of the particles moves on a homographic motion. These solutions as {\em elliptic relative equilibria} (or in shorthand notation, simply ERE). In particular when the eccentricity of the Kepler orbit \(e = 0\), the Keplerian elliptic motion becomes a circular motion; at this point, all bodies move around the center of masses along circular orbits with the same frequency, which are traditionally refereed to as \textit{relative equilibria}. See [\textit{K. R. Meyer} and \textit{D. S. Schmidt}, J. Differ. Equations 214, No. 2, 256--298 (2005; Zbl 1071.70008)]. It is a well-known fact that for the planar three-body problem with masses \(m_1, m_2, m_3 > 0\), it turns out that the stability of elliptic Lagrangian solutions depends on two parameters, namely the mass parameter \(\beta\in [0, 9]\) defined below and the eccentricity \(e \in [0,1)\), \[ \beta = \frac{27(m_1m_2+m_1m_3+m_2m_3)}{(m_1+m_2+m_3)^2}.\tag{2} \] For the elliptic relative equilibria raised from a general non-collinear central configuration, even for four bodies, the stability problem is still quite open. The main concern in this paper is the linear stability of the elliptic relative equilibria of four-body problem. Continuing with [J. Differ. Equations 91, No. 1, 168--179 (1991; Zbl 0724.70015)], \textit{Z. Xia} addresses a special case of such ERE, which is raised from a central configuration of two primary masses \(m_1\), \(m_2\) and two infinitesimal masses \(m_3\), \(m_4\). It is shown that the elliptic relative equilibria raised from the non-convex central configurations are always linearly unstable, while for the elliptic relative equilibria raised from the convex central configurations, the conditions of linear stability with respect to the parameters are provided. More specifically the following results are proven. Theorem 1.1. In the planar 4-body problem with given masses \(m = (m_1, m_2, m_3, m_4) \in ({\mathbb R}^+)^4\), denote the ERE with eccentricity \(e \in [0, 1)\) for \(m\) by \(q_{m,e}(t) = (q_1(t), q_2(t), q_3(t),q_4(t))\). When \(m_3, m_4\) tend to 0, the linearized Hamiltonian system at \(q_{m,e}\) is reduced to the sum of 3 uncoupled Hamiltonian systems: the first is the linearized system of the Kepler \(2\)-body problem at the corresponding Kepler orbit; the second is the linearized Hamiltonian system of a 3-body problem at the Lagrangian ERE with the original eccentricity \(e\) and the mass parameter \(\beta\) given by (2) with \(m_3 = 0\); and the last one depends on the convexity of the corresponding central configuration. Theorem 1.3. The non-convex ERE with two infinitesimal masses is always linearly unstable.