Homoclinic dynamics in a restricted four-body problem: transverse connections for the saddle-focus equilibrium solution set

Abstract

We describe a method for computing an atlas for the stable or unstable manifold attached to an equilibrium point and implement the method for the saddle-focus libration points of the planar equilateral restricted four-body problem. We employ the method at the maximally symmetric case of equal masses, where we compute atlases for both the stable and unstable manifolds. The resulting atlases are comprised of thousands of individual chart maps, with each chart represented by a two-variable Taylor polynomial. Post-processing the atlas data yields approximate intersections of the invariant manifolds, which we refine via a shooting method for an appropriate two-point boundary value problem. Finally, we apply numerical continuation to some of the BVP problems. This breaks the symmetries and leads to connecting orbits for some nonequal values of the primary masses.