Triple collisions in the isosceles three body problem with small mass ratio

Abstract

We use a slightly modified version of McGehee's transformation to study the triple collisions of the isosceles three body problem in a way that allows us to let the mass ratio go to zero. We study the limiting case and show that the collision manifold changes topologically, which affects the behaviour of near collision orbits. We also obtain new information about the flow on the collision manifold when the mass ratio is small.