Stability of Hamiltonian relative equilibria in symmetric magnetically confined rigid bodies (Q2514340)

First of all the Hamiltonian description of the orbitron is presented. Then the characterization of the relative equilibria of the orbitron is given, that is obtained out of the critical points of the augmented Hamiltonian, constructed at the usage of the energy momentum map, associated to the toral symmetry of this system spelled out previously. The following section is dedicated to the stability analysis of two branches of equatorial relative equilibria. One of these branches is singular, in the sense that it exhibits nontrivial isotropy group, and the other one is regular. The stability study is carried out for both the standard and the generalized orbitrons using the energy-momentum method, which yields in this case a set of conditions whose joint satisfaction is sufficient for the toral stability of the regular relative equilibria. Concerning the singular relative equilibria, none of these solutions can be proved to be stable by the usage of the energy-momentum method for the standard orbitron, while in the generalized case the authors are able to specify sufficient conditions involving both the design parameters of the external magnetic field and the dynamical features of the system that guarantee its nonlinear stability. New linear methods are introduced to assess the sharpness of the stability conditions. More specifically, it is shown that the spectral instability of a natural linearized Hamiltonian vector field that can be associated to any relative equilibrium, ensures its nonlinear instability. This result is very technical in the sense that it allows, for example, to prove the nonlinear instability of the singular branch of relative equilibria of the standard orbitron and the sharpness of some of the nonlinear stability conditions obtained in the regular case. In order to improve the readability of this article, most proofs of the results obtained and a number of technical details about the geometry of the system that are used in these proofs, are included in appendices at the end of the article.