Xijun Hu

It is well known that a planar central configuration of the $n$-body problem gives rise to a solution where each particle moves in a Keplerian orbit with a common eccentricity $\mathfrak{e}\in[0,1)$. We call this solution an elliptic relative equilibrium (ERE for short). Since each particle of the ERE is always in the same plane, it is natural to regard it as a planar $n$-body problem. But in practical applications, it is more meaningful to consider the ERE as a spatial $n$-body problem (i.\,e., each particle belongs to $\mathbb{R}^3$). In this paper, as a spatial $n$-body problem, we first decompose the linear system of ERE into two parts, the planar and the spatial part. Following the Meyer\,--\,Schmidt coordinate~\cite{Meyer}, we give an expression for the spatial part and further obtain a rigorous analytical method to study the linear stability of the spatial part by the Maslov-type index theory. As an application, we obtain stability results for some classical ERE, including the elliptic Lagrangian solution, the Euler solution and the $1+n$-gon solution.

It is well known that the linear stability of elliptic Lagrangian solutions depends on the mass parameter $\beta = 27(m_1m_2+m_2m_3+m_3m_1)/(m_1+m_2+m_3)^2 \in [0,9]$ and the eccentricity $e \in [0,1)$. Based on new techniques for evaluating the hyperbolicity and the recently developed trace formula for Hamiltonian systems [9], we identify regions for $(\beta,e)$ such that elliptic Lagrangian solutions are hyperbolic. Consequently, we have proven that the elliptic relative equilibrium of square central configurations is hyperbolic with any eccentricity.