An efficient approach for searching three-body periodic orbits passing through Eulerian configuration

Abstract

A new efficient approach for searching three-body periodic equal-mass collisionless orbits passing through Eulerian configuration is presented. The approach is based on a symmetry property of the solutions at the half period. Depending on two previously established symmetry types on the shape sphere, each solution is presented by one or two distinct initial conditions (one or two points in the search domain). A numerical search based on Newton’s method on a relatively coarse search grid for solutions with relatively small scale-invariant periods $T^{\ast }<70$ is conducted. The linear systems at each Newton’s iteration are computed by high order high precision Taylor series method. The search produced 12,431 initial conditions (i.c.s) corresponding to 6333 distinct solutions. In addition to passing through the Eulerian configuration, 35 of the solutions are also free-fall ones. Although most of the found solutions are new, all linearly stable solutions among them (only 7) are old ones. Particular attention is paid to the details of the high precision computations and the analysis of accuracy. All i.c.s are given with 100 correct digits.