The spatial (planar) three-body problem admits the ten (six) integrals of energy, center of mass, linear momentum and angular momentum. Fixing these integrals defines an eight (six) dimensional algebraic set called the integral manifold, 𝔐(c, h) (m(c, h)), which depends on the energy level h and the magnitude c of the angular momentum vector. The seven (five) dimensional reduced integral manifold, 𝔐R(c, h) (mR(c, h)), is the quotient space 𝔐(c, h)/SO2 (m(c, h)/SO2) where the SO2 action is rotation about the angular momentum vector. We want to determine how the geometry or topology of these sets depends on c and h. It turns out that there is one bifurcation parameter, ν = −c2h, and nme (six) special values of this parameter, νi, i = 1, …, 9.At each of the special values the geometric restrictions imposed by the integrals change, but one of these values, ν5, does not give rise to a change in the topology of the integral manifolds 𝔐(c, h) and 𝔐R(c, h). The other eight special values give rise to nine different topologically distinct cases. We give a complete description of the geometry of these sets along with their homology. These results confirm some conjectures and refutes several others.
Two Conjectures of G.D. Birkhoff
