Anisotropic two-body problem under the Buckingham potential (Q830893)

In this paper, a qualitative study of the dynamics of two-point masses interacting via an anisotropic generalized Buckingham potential is described. The planar anisotropic Buckingham problem is investigated, with strength of anisotropy \(\mu>1\), with focus on the asymptotic dynamics at infinity, ``escape orbits''. The chaotic behavior of escape orbits in the anisotropic generalized Buckingham with a negatively charged Coulomb term is studied and proved. The authors describe the flow of the relative two-body Hamiltonian system, on and near the so-called ``infinity manifold'', and they show that embedded in the four-dimensional phase-space, the infinity manifold is topologically a circle for the zero energy level, and a torus for fixed positive energy levels. They also investigate the presence of chaos in a related problem, where the anisotropy is a small perturbative term, and by applying the dynamical systems Melnikov method, they prove analytically that the perturbed system exhibits chaotic behavior in the zero energy case, and that the flow on the zero energy level set of initial conditions of the escape orbits has a non zero phase-plane volume.