The Lagrange reduction of the n-body problem, a survey

DOI10.1007/S40306-013-0010-7zbMATH Open1391.70026arXiv1111.1334OpenAlexW2003571207MaRDI QIDQ356542FDOQ356542

Authors: Alain Chenciner 

Publication date: 26 July 2013

Published in: Acta Mathematica Vietnamica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: In his fondamental "Essay on the 3-body problem", Lagrange, well before Jacobi's "reduction of the node", carries out the first complete reduction of symetries. Discovering the so-called homographic motions, he shows that they necessarily take place in a fixed plane. The true nature of this reduction is revealed if one considers the n-body problem in an euclidean space of arbitrary dimension. The actual dimension of the ambiant space then appears as a constraint, namely the angular momentum bivector's degeneracy. The main part of this survey is a detailed description of the results obtained in a joint paper with Alain Albouy published in french (Inventiones 1998): for a non homothetic homographic motion to exist, it is necessary that the space of motion be even dimensional. Two cases are possible: either the configuration is "central" (that is a critical point of the potential among configurations with a given moment of inertia) and the space where the motion takes place is endowed with an hermitian structure, or it is "balanced" (that is a critical point of the potential among configurations with a given inertia spectrum) and the motion is a new type, quasi-periodic, of relative equilibrium. Hip-Hops, which are substitutes to the non-existing homographic solutions with odd dimensional space of motion, are also discussed.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1111.1334

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zbMATH Keywords

reduction\(n\)-body problemhomographic solutions

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

(n)-body problems (70F10) Symmetries and conservation laws, reverse symmetries, invariant manifolds and their bifurcations, reduction for problems in Hamiltonian and Lagrangian mechanics (70H33) Periodic and almost periodic solutions for problems in Hamiltonian and Lagrangian mechanics (70H12)

Cites Work

• Minima of the action integral in the Newtonian problem of 4 bodies with equal masses: `Hip-hop' orbits
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• The \(n\)-body problem and mutual distances
• The angular momentum of a relative equilibrium
• Symmetric trajectories for the \(2N\)-body problem with equal masses
• Integral manifolds of the \(N\)-body problem
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• Poincaré and the Three-Body Problem
• The ``form of a triangle
• Galilei Group and Law of Gravitation
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Cited In (8)

• On some collinear configurations in the planar three-body problem
• Existence of symmetric central configurations
• On the \(n\)-body problem in \(\mathbb{R} 4\)
• Partial reduction in the \(N\)-body planetary problem using the angular momentum integral
• Are nonsymmetric balanced configurations of four equal masses virtual or real?
• Non-avoided crossings for \(n\)-body balanced configurations in \(\mathbb R^3\) near a central configuration
• Natural dynamical reduction of the three-body problem
• Symmetries and ``simple solutions of the classical \(n\)-body problem

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