Related papers: Bifurcations of planar balanced configurations for…

For the gravitational $n$-body problem, the simplest motions are provided by those rigid motions in which each body moves along a Keplerian orbit and the shape of the system is a constant (up to rotations and scalings) configuration…

In this paper we find a class of new degenerate central configurations and bifurcations in the Newtonian $n$-body problem. In particular we analyze the Rosette central configurations, namely a coplanar configuration where $n$ particles of…

Central configurations play an important role in the dynamics of the $n$-body problem: they occur as relative equilibria and as asymptotic configurations in colliding trajectories. We illustrate how they can be found as projective fixed…

In this article we study topological bifurcations of critical orbits of equivariant gradient equations. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of global bifurcations of solutions of these equations. Moreover, we apply…

For the Newtonian (gravitational) $n$-body problem in the Euclidean $d$-dimensional space, the simplest possible solutions are provided by those rigid motions (homographic solutions) in which each body moves along a Keplerian orbit and the…

The degeneracy of central configurations in the planar $N$-body problem makes their enumeration problem hard and the related dynamics appealing. To truly understand the bifurcations of central configurations, we should work in the FULL…

We study the bifurcations of central configurations of the Newtonian four-body problem when some of the masses are equal. First, we continue numerically the solutions for the equal mass case, and we find values of the mass parameter at…

A previous work introduced pair space, which is spanned by the center of mass of a system and the relative positions (pair positions) of its constituent bodies. Here, I show that in the $N$-body Newtonian problem, a configuration that does…

The plane case of central configurations with four different masses is analyzed theoretically and is computed numerically. We follow Dziobek's approach to four body central configurations with a direct implicit method of our own in which…

Planar central configurations can be seen as critical points of the reduced potential or solutions of a system of equations. By the homogeneity and invariance of the potential with respect to SO(2), it is possible to see that the…

Two numerical algorithms for analyzing planar central and balanced configurations in the $(n+1)$-body problem with a small mass are presented. The first one relies on a direct solution method of the $(n+1)$-body problem by using a…

We consider the critical points (equilibria) of a planar potential generated by $n$ Newtonian point masses augmented with a quadratic term (such as arises from a centrifugal effect). Particular cases of this problem have been considered…

Central configurations and relative equilibria are an important facet of the study of the $N$-body problem, but become very difficult to rigorously analyze for $N>3$. In this paper we focus on a particular but interesting class of…

For planar ($N$+1)-body ($N$\,$\geq$ 2) problem with a regular $N$-polygon, under the assumption that the ($N$+1)-th body locates at the geometric center of the regular $N$-polygon, we obtain the sufficient and necessary conditions that the…

Central configurations give rise to self-similar solutions to the Newtonian $N$-body problem, and play important roles in understanding its complicated dynamics. Even the simple question of whether or not there are finitely many planar…

In this paper,we study spatial central configurations where N bodies are at the vertices of a regular N-gon $T$ and the other 4 bodies are symmetrically located on the straight line that is perpendicular to the plane that contains $T$ and…

Moeckel (1990), Moeckel and Sim\'o (1995) proved that, while continuously changing the masses, a 946-body planar central configuration bifurcates into a spatial central configuration. We show that this kind of bifurcation does not occur…

Given two positive real numbers $M$ and $m$ and an integer $n>2$, it is well known that we can find a family of solutions of the $(n+1)$-body problem where the body with mass $M$ stays put at the origin and the other $n$ bodies, all with…

Using geometric mechanics methods, we examine aspects of the dynamics of n mass points in $\mathbb{R}^4$ with a general pairwise potential. We investigate the central force problem, set up the n-body problem and discuss certain properties…

We show that there exist an upper bound and a lower bound for the number of non-degenerate central configurations of the n-body problem in the plane with a homogeneous potential. In particular, both bounds are independent of the homogeneous…