The dynamics around the collinear points of the elliptic three-body problem: A normal form approach

Abstract

We study the dynamics of the collinear points in the planar, restricted three-body problem, assuming that the primaries move on an elliptic orbit around a common barycenter. The equations of motion can be conveniently written in a rotating–pulsating barycentric frame, taking the true anomaly as independent variable. We consider the Hamiltonian modeling this problem in the extended phase space and we implement a normal form to make a center manifold reduction. The normal form provides an approximate solution for the Cartesian coordinates, which allows us to construct several kinds of orbits, most notably planar and vertical Lyapunov orbits, and halo orbits. We compare the analytical results with a numerical simulation, which requires special care in the selection of the initial conditions.