A Statistical Solution to the Chaotic, Non-Hierarchical Three-Body Problem

TL;DR

This paper introduces a statistical, ergodic-based approach to solving the chaotic, non-hierarchical three-body problem, providing closed-form outcome distributions that align well with numerical simulations for chaotic encounters.

Contribution

It develops a novel ergodic hypothesis-based statistical solution for the non-hierarchical three-body problem, enabling analytical outcome distributions in chaotic regimes.

Findings

Good agreement between analytical distributions and numerical simulations for chaotic encounters.

Identification of 'scrambles' as key states that ergodicize the system.

Predicted super-thermal eccentricity distributions of survivor binaries.

Abstract

The three-body problem is arguably the oldest open question in astrophysics, and has resisted a general analytic solution for centuries. Various implementations of perturbation theory provide solutions in portions of parameter space, but only where hierarchies of masses or separations exist. Numerical integrations show that bound, non-hierarchical triples of Newtonian point particles will almost always disintegrate into a single escaping star and a stable, bound binary, but the chaotic nature of the three-body problem prevents the derivation of tractable analytic formulae deterministically mapping initial conditions to final outcomes. However, chaos also motivates the assumption of ergodicity, suggesting that the distribution of outcomes is uniform across the accessible phase volume. Here, we use the ergodic hypothesis to derive a complete statistical solution to the non-hierarchical three-body problem, one which provides closed-form distributions of outcomes (e.g. binary orbital elements) given the conserved integrals of motion. We compare our outcome distributions to large ensembles of numerical three-body integrations, and find good agreement, so long as we restrict ourselves to "resonant" encounters (the ~50% of scatterings that undergo chaotic evolution). In analyzing our scattering experiments, we identify "scrambles" (periods in time where no pairwise binaries exist) as the key dynamical state that ergodicizes a non-hierarchical triple. The generally super-thermal distributions of survivor binary eccentricity that we predict have notable applications to many astrophysical scenarios. For example, non-hierarchical triples produced dynamically in globular clusters are a primary formation channel for black hole mergers, but the rates and properties of the resulting gravitational waves depend on the distribution of post-disintegration eccentricities.