Relative equilibria of the 3-body problem in $\mathbb{R}^4$

Alain Albouy, Holger R. Dullin

Published 2020-02-03Version 1

The classical equations of the Newtonian 3-body problem do not only define the familiar 3-dimensional motions. The dimension of the motion may also be 4, and cannot be higher. We prove that in dimension 4, for three arbitrary positive masses, and for an arbitrary value (of rank 4) of the angular momentum, the energy possesses a minimum, which corresponds to a motion of relative equilibrium which is Lyapunov stable when considered as an equilibrium of the reduced problem. The nearby motions are nonsingular and bounded for all time. We also describe the full family of relative equilibria, and show that its image by the energy-momentum map presents cusps and other interesting features.