Hamiltonian reduction through explicit canonical transformations and resonant canonical variables (Q6171487)

The classical $n$-body problem is nonintegrable for $n>2$ and so perturbation theory is usually applied for its investigation where a general solution to the 2-body problem is used as the first approximation. As the equations of motion are convenient to represent in the Hamiltonian form, a choice of appropriate canonical variables is very important because it enables to simplify a structure of the perturbed equations of motion. Two known sets of canonical variables, namely, the Delaunay and Poincaré variables are used most often but some other sets may be also useful in applications. So constructing such sets of canonical variables, which is the subject of this paper, is a very interesting topic. The author presents several methods to produce new sets of canonical variables which can be used for the representation of the orbital motion in the perturbed 2-body problem. Besides, a new set of canonical orbital elements is defined analytically and independently of any dynamical system, the author calls them resonant canonical variables. They provide an analytical tool to analyze perturbations in the most general form and may be useful in the study of low orbits around Earth when the second zonal harmonic in the gravitational potential is taken into account. Summarizing, one can state that the problem under consideration is very interesting and may be useful for applications.