Global geometry of 3-body motions with vanishing angular momentum I

Abstract

Following Jacobi’s geometrization of Lagrange’s least action principle, trajectories of classical mechanics can be characterized as geodesics on the configuration space M with respect to a suitable metric which is the conformal modification of the kinematic metric by the factor (U + h), where U and h are the potential function and the total energy, respectively. In the special case of 3-body motions with zero angular momentum, the global geometry of such trajectories can be reduced to that of their moduli curves, which record the change of size and shape, in the moduli space of oriented m-triangles, whose kinematic metric is, in fact, a Riemannian cone over the shape space M ^* ≃ S ²(1/2).

In this paper, it is shown that the moduli curve of such a motion is uniquely determined by its shape curve (which only records the change of shape) in the case of h h ≠ 0, while in the special case of h = 0 it is uniquely determined up to scaling. Thus, the study of the global geometry of such motions can be further reduced to that of the shape curves, which are time-parametrized curves on the 2-sphere characterized by a third order ODE. Moreover, these curves have two remarkable properties, namely the uniqueness of parametrization and the monotonicity, that constitute a solid foundation for a systematic study of their global geometry and naturally lead to the formulation of some pertinent problems.