Reduction and regularization of the Kepler problem

Abstract

The KS regularization connects the dynamics of the harmonic oscillator to the dynamics of bounded Kepler orbits. Using orbit space reduction, it can be shown that reduced harmonic oscillator orbits can be identified with re-parametrized Kepler orbits by factorizing the KS map as reduction mapping followed by a chart on the reduced phase space. In this note, we will show that also other regularization maps can be obtained this way. In particular, we will show how Moser’s regularization and Ligon–Schaaf regularization are related to KS-regularization. All regularizations are a result of choosing the right invariants to represent the reduced phase space, which is isomorphic to T^+S^3, and a chart on this reduced phase space. We show how this opens the way to directly reduce the KS transformed Kepler system and find other regularization maps that are valid for all values of the Keplerian energy similar to Ligon–Schaaf regularization.