Global geometry of 3-body motions with vanishing angular momentum. I (Q926013)

The Riemannian geometric approaches is used to the 3-body problem with a vanishing angular momentum. The basic technique applied here are the Lagrange's least action principle. A theorem, which describes a type of monotonic behavior of the shape curves, is derived. On the vanishing of the angular momentum of the 3-body motion leading to the triple collision had been stated by Sundman and Siegel. The authors extend the proof to the higher order of asymptotic estimates, using Winter's ideas. One of major results is that the study of the 3-body motion with the vanishing angular momentum reduces to the analysis of specific curves on the shape space, which is the sphere \(S^2\subset\mathbb{R}^3\). A list of 16 references is included.