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Implications for a simple deterministic chaos definition

Among many others, one definition of deterministic chaos terms "chaotic" a classical dynamical system that satisfies the following three properties: sensitive dependence to initial ...
Lo Scrondo's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
73 views

Nonintegrable classical dynamical systems and deterministic chaos

I'm trying to delineate a minimal (and informal) "taxonomy" for classical continuous dynamical systems that could be interested by the phenomenon of "chaos" - unfortunately the ...
Lo Scrondo's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
237 views

Movement of repelled particles in a ball

EDIT: Given a system of $N\geq 3$ charged point particles in $\mathbb{R}^3$ of the same charge which interact according to Coulomb law (thus they repell one from each other). Is it possible that ...
asv's user avatar
  • 21.8k
27 votes
4 answers
13k views

Hamiltonian, Lagrangian and Newton formalism of mechanics

If my thinking is wrong please let me know. I have little knowledge on beyond-college physics. For research purposes, I read a few introductions to these three formalisms of classical mechanics [1,2,...
Henry.L's user avatar
  • 8,071
9 votes
1 answer
726 views

When does a Lagrangian dynamical system have an equivalent Hamiltonian description?

Let a Lagrangian dynamical system with $n$ degrees of freedom and configuration space $\mathbb{R}^n$ (i.e. phase space $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$), which is described by $L=L(q_{i},\dot{q}_{i},t)$, $i=1,2,......
Konstantinos Kanakoglou's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
116 views

Dynamics of pairwise distances in the $n$-body problem

Disclaimer: I have asked this question on Physics SE a week ago, but got no answers. I know that some MO users are interested in the $n$-body problem, so I decided to cross post here as well. ...
Mehmet Ozan Kabak's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
88 views

underdamped oscillation with quadratic decay

I know that for a 2nd order linear differential equation system, there are 3 possible scenarios: over-damped, critically damped and underdamped. For the underdamped case the solutions are of the form: ...
jkt's user avatar
  • 169
3 votes
0 answers
194 views

Rigid-body in a central field: orbital and attitude motion

Question I would like to find a nice set of explicit coordinates for the family (parametrised by angular momentum) of reduced systems representing a rigid-body in a central field in which the orbital ...
Dayal C Strub's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
589 views

How to deal with the singular reduction of the Hamiltonian n body problem?

I would like to consider the reduced Hamiltonian $n$ body problem, but am struggling with the angular momentum reduction seeing as the $SO(3)$ action is not free and the reduction is singular. ...
Dayal C Strub's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
5k views

Bertrand theorem - central forces

Here is a version of Bertrand theorem. Let us consider a force $F(r)$ which depends only on the distance to a given point. If all trajectories which remain bounded are closed, then either $F(r)=ar$ ...
camomille's user avatar
  • 551
5 votes
2 answers
996 views

Poincaré Recurrence and Dense Sets

This is kind of a spin-off of the question asked here. Take the interval $X:=[0,1]$ with $\mu$ being standard Lebesgue measure. Let $f$ be a measure preserving map $f:[0,1]\rightarrow [0,1]$. The ...
Alex R.'s user avatar
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17 votes
5 answers
2k views

2- and 3-body problems when gravity is not inverse-square

Suppose that gravity did not follow an inverse-square law, but was instead a central force diminishing as $1/d^p$ for distance separation $d$ and some power $p$. Two questions: Presumably the 2-body ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
101 votes
1 answer
8k views

Dropping three bodies

Consider the usual three-body problem with Newtonian $1/r^2$ force between masses. Let the three masses start off at rest, and not collinear. Then they will become collinear a finite time ...
Richard Montgomery's user avatar