Topology of the Integral Manifolds of the N -Body Problem with Positive Energy

Abstract

The integral manifolds of the N-body problem are the level sets of energy and angular momentum. For positive energy and non-zero angular momentum, all level sets are diffeomorphic to a non-zero level set of angular momentum on the unit tangent bundle of the configuration space. The one complication that arises in attempting to describe this level set explicitly is the degeneracy at the syzygies of the equations that define angular momentum. In this work, we analyze the behavior of the angular momentum near syzygies, and show how to construct local coordinates near the syzygies. In particular, we show that the projection of the integral manifold onto the configuration space \(K\)c is a homotopy equivalence, and use this to compute the homology of the integral manifolds.