Keplerian orbits through the Conley-Zehnder index

DOI10.1007/S12346-020-00430-0MaRDI QIDQ2222385zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Henry Kavle, Alessandro Portaluri, Daniel C. Offin

Publication date 27 January 2021

Published in Qualitative Theory of Dynamical Systems (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.00075

zbMATH Keywords

Conley-Zehnder indexlinear and spectral stabilitytwo-body problem

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Lagrangian submanifolds; Maslov index (53D12) Two-body problems (70F05) Celestial mechanics (70F15)

Abstract: It was discovered by Gordon in 1977 that Keplerian ellipses in the plane are minimizers of the Lagrangian action and spectrally stable as periodic points of the associated Hamiltonian flow. The aim of this paper is to give a homotopy theoretical proof of these results through a self-contained, explicit and simple computation of the Conley-Zehnder index. The techniques developed in this paper can be used to investigate the higher dimensional case of Keplerian ellipses, where the classical variational proof no longer applies.

Review text

It was discovered by Gordon that Keplerian ellipses in the plane are minimizers of the Lagrangian action and spectrally stable as periodic points of the associated Hamiltonian flow. The aim of this paper is to give a direct proof of these results, already proved by Hu and Sun, in the planar elliptic three-body problem, ``through a self-contained and explicit computation of the Conley-Zehnder index through crossing forms in the Lagrangian setting. Through the approach developed in this paper, it is possible to explicitly compute the index properties of closed Keplerian orbits for surfaces of constant Gaussian curvature among others. The authors conclude that Gordon's theorem breaks down if the dimension of the configuration space is bigger than 2, due to the fact that the loop space of the Euclidean \(n\)-dimensional space (for \(n\ge3\)) with the origin removed is path connected, contrary to what happens with their approach.

Recommendations

• The Conley-Zehnder indices of the rotating Kepler problem
• Variational property of periodic Kepler orbits in constant curvature spaces
• Lagrangian actions for elliptical solutions of 2-body and 3-body problems with fixed energies
• On the minimality of Keplerian arcs with fixed negative energy
• A minimizing property of hyperbolic Keplerian orbits

Cites work

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Cited in

(16)

• Retrograde orbits in ring configurations of N bodies
• An index theory for zero energy solutions of the planar anisotropic Kepler problem
• Spectral flow, Brouwer degree and Hill's determinant formula
• Sturm theory with applications in geometry and classical mechanics
• Variational property of periodic Kepler orbits in constant curvature spaces
• On the minimality of Keplerian arcs with fixed negative energy
• Infinitesimal time reparametrisation and its applications
• Conformal triality of the Kepler problem
• Zur Theorie der kristallographischen Orbits
• The Conley-Zehnder indices of the rotating Kepler problem
• A minimizing property of hyperbolic Keplerian orbits
• Sundman transformation and alternative tangent structures
• The Conley-Zehnder indices of the spatial Hill three-body problem
• Periodic solutions to relativistic Kepler problems: a variational approach
• Morse index of circular solutions for repulsive central force problems on surfaces
• The regularized free fall. I: Index computations

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