Combined effect of Stokes drag, oblateness and radiation pressure on the existence and stability of equilibrium points in the restricted four-body problem

Abstract

This paper studies numerically the existence of collinear and non-collinear equilibrium points and their linear stability in the frame work of photogravitational circular restricted four-body problem with Stokes drag acting as a dissipative force and considering the first primary as a radiating body and the second primary as an oblate spheroid. The mass of the fourth body is assumed to be infinitesimal and does not affect the motion of the three primaries which are always at the vertices of an equilateral triangle (Lagrangian configuration). It is found that at constant dissipative force, and a simultaneous increase in both radiation pressure and oblateness coefficients, the curves that define the path of the motion of the infinitesimal body are found to shrink due to shifts in the positions of equilibrium points. All the collinear and non-collinear equilibrium points are found to be linearly unstable under the combined effect of radiation pressure, oblateness and Stokes drag. The energy integral is seen to be time dependent due to the presence of the drag force. More so the dynamic property of the system is investigated with the help of Lyapunov characteristic exponents (LCEs). It is found that the system is chaotic as the trajectories locally diverge from each other and the equilibrium points are chaotic attractors. We justified the relevance of the model in astronomy by applying it to a stellar system (Gliese 667C) and another found that both the existence and stability of the equilibrium points of any restricted few body system greatly depend of the value of the mass parameter.