A General Framework for Relative Equilibria in the Symmetric Full Gravitational N-Body Problem

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Crespo, F., Dullin, H. R.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866918531079077888
author Crespo, F.
Dullin, H. R.
author_facet Crespo, F.
Dullin, H. R.
contents We present a method to determine admissible configurations that lead to relative equilibria in the full gravitational N-body problem. The method exploits the SO(3) symmetry by working with its fundamental invariants and does not rely on restrictive assumptions about mass distributions or on truncating the gravitational potential. As a result, it yields necessary conditions that apply to arbitrary rigid-body configurations. This work is presented in two parts. In the first (this) part, we assume every body is axisymmetric to give a clear, pedagogical exposition of the approach; in a forthcoming paper, we remove that restriction and treat general triaxial bodies (the method remains valid, but the number of variables increases). As an illustration, we systematically recover all known relative-equilibrium families for the two-body problem consisting of one sphere and one axisymmetric body, confirm earlier results in the literature, and derive new necessary conditions for certain configurations, including additional constraints for the arrow and non-Lagrangian types. In the special case of a sphere and an axisymmetric body, we also obtain sufficient conditions for relative equilibria under a monotonicity assumption on the potential.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_30644
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A General Framework for Relative Equilibria in the Symmetric Full Gravitational N-Body Problem
Crespo, F.
Dullin, H. R.
Dynamical Systems
We present a method to determine admissible configurations that lead to relative equilibria in the full gravitational N-body problem. The method exploits the SO(3) symmetry by working with its fundamental invariants and does not rely on restrictive assumptions about mass distributions or on truncating the gravitational potential. As a result, it yields necessary conditions that apply to arbitrary rigid-body configurations. This work is presented in two parts. In the first (this) part, we assume every body is axisymmetric to give a clear, pedagogical exposition of the approach; in a forthcoming paper, we remove that restriction and treat general triaxial bodies (the method remains valid, but the number of variables increases). As an illustration, we systematically recover all known relative-equilibrium families for the two-body problem consisting of one sphere and one axisymmetric body, confirm earlier results in the literature, and derive new necessary conditions for certain configurations, including additional constraints for the arrow and non-Lagrangian types. In the special case of a sphere and an axisymmetric body, we also obtain sufficient conditions for relative equilibria under a monotonicity assumption on the potential.
title A General Framework for Relative Equilibria in the Symmetric Full Gravitational N-Body Problem
topic Dynamical Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.30644