English

Infinitely Many Eclipses

Dynamical Systems 2007-05-23 v1 Differential Geometry

Abstract

We show that any bounded zero-angular momentum solution for the Newtonian three-body problem must suffer infinitely many eclipses, or collinearities, provided that it does not suffer a triple collision. Motivation for the result comes from the dream of building a symbolic dynamics for the three-body problem, one whose symbols 1, 2, 3 representing the three types of eclipses. The proof involves the conformal geometry of the shape sphere.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0110300,
  title  = {Infinitely Many Eclipses},
  author = {Richard Montgomery},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0110300},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

14 pages. See also http://www.count.ucsc.edu/~rmont