Keplerian Dynamics on the Heisenberg Group and Elsewhere

Richard Montgomery, Corey Shanbrom

Published 2012-12-12Version 1

Posing Kepler's problem of motion around a fixed "sun" requires the geometric mechanician to choose a metric and a Laplacian. The metric provides the kinetic energy. The fundamental solution to the Laplacian (with delta source at the "sun") provides the potential energy. Posing Kepler's three laws (with input from Galileo) requires symmetry conditions. The metric space must be homogeneous, isotropic, and admit dilations. Any Riemannian manifold enjoying these three symmetry properties is Euclidean. So if we want a semblance of Kepler's three laws to hold but also want to leave the Euclidean realm, we are forced out of the realm of Riemannian geometries. The Heisenberg group (a subRiemannian geometry) and lattices provide the simplest examples of metric spaces enjoying a semblance of all three of the Keplerian symmetries. We report success in posing, and solving, the Kepler problem on the Heisenberg group. We report failures in posing the Kepler problem on the rank two lattice and partial success in solving the problem on the integers. We pose a number of questions.