The Finsler geometry of the rotating Kepler problem

DOI10.5486/PMD.2014.5368MaRDI QIDQ2875438zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors K. Cieliebak, Otto van Koert, Urs Frauenfelder

Publication date 14 August 2014

Published in Publicationes Mathematicae Debrecen (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1021

zbMATH Keywords

3-body problemFinsler geometryflag curvature

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Global differential geometry of Finsler spaces and generalizations (areal metrics) (53C60) Three-body problems (70F07)

Abstract: We investigate the Cartan and Finsler geometry of the rotating Kepler problem, a limit case of the restricted three body problem that arises if the mass of the one of the primaries goes to zero. We show that the Hamiltonian for the rotating Kepler problem can be regarded as the Legendre transform of a certain family of Finsler metrics on the two-sphere. For very negative energy levels, these Finsler metrics are close to the round metric, and the associated flag curvature is hence positive. On the other hand, we show that the flag curvature can become negative once the energy level becomes sufficiently high.

Review text

The rotating Kepler's problem arises as a limiting case of the restricted 3-body problem when the mass of one of the primaries converges to zero. The authors prove that the bounded components of the regularized planar Kepler problem in a rotating frame are fiberwise convex (Theorem A). Hence, the rotating Kepler problem has a Cartan structure (the structure of a Legendre dual to a Finsler metric). The second main result of the paper states that for the rotating Kepler problem there are regions in which the flag curvature is negative (Observation B). In the appendix, the authors give a MAPLE program to numerically calculate the flag curvature of a Cartan metric.

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Cited in

(7)

• Rotation functions in the problem of orbital classification of geodesic flows on ellipsoids and Euler problem in rigid body dynamics
• On a convex embedding of the Euler problem of two fixed centers
• Bifurcations of symmetric periodic orbits via Floer homology
• On Feynman’s analysis of the geometry of Keplerian orbits
• Dihedral homology and the moon
• Fiberwise convexity of Hill's lunar problem
• Transverse foliations in the rotating Kepler problem

Describes a project that uses

Uses Software

• Maple

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