Closed families of periodic solutions of a restricted three-body problem

Abstract

The planar restricted three-body problem has an infinite number of families of symmetric periodic solutions (SPSs). The natural SPS families include certain families which are self-closed with respect to small variations in a parameter. These families remain closed for any admissible variations in the mass parameter μ. However, there are closed SRS families of another type, which exist only in bounded intervals of μ and are formed via self-bifurcations of some SPS families. This type of SPS families is poorly understude. This work describes the initial stage (4 bifurcations) of a bifurcation cascade of the natural family i and points out other closed SPS families known to date.