Chaotic motions in the restricted four body problem via Devaney's saddle-focus homoclinic tangle theorem

• Published in: Journal of Differential Equations 2019-02, Vol.266 (4), p.1709-1755
• Main Authors: Kepley, Shane, Mireles James, J.D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0022-0396; 1090-2732
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jde.2018.08.007

We prove the existence of chaotic motions in an equilateral planar circular restricted four body problem (CRFBP), establishing that the system is not integrable. The proof works by verifying the hypotheses of a topological forcing theorem for Hamiltonian vector fields on R4 which hypothesizes the existence of a transverse homoclinic orbit in the energy manifold of a saddle focus equilibrium. We develop mathematically rigorous computer assisted arguments for verifying these hypotheses, and provide an implementation for CRFBP. Due to the Hamiltonian structure, this also establishes the existence of a “blue sky catastrophe”, and hence an analytic family of periodic orbits of arbitrarily long period at nearby energy levels. Our method works far from any perturbative regime and requires no mass symmetry. Additionally, the method is constructive and yields additional byproducts such as the locations of transverse connecting orbits, quantitative information about the invariant manifolds, and bounds on transport times.