Invariant manifolds in Hamiltonian systems with applications to the Earth-Moon system

TL;DR

This paper explores the role of invariant manifolds in Hamiltonian systems, illustrating their influence on chaotic dynamics and applications in celestial mechanics, including asteroid transport and satellite trajectory design.

Contribution

It introduces efficient numerical methods to visualize invariant manifolds and analyzes their impact in the Hénon map and the Earth-Moon three-body problem.

Findings

Invariant manifolds shape phase space structure

Manifolds influence transport and stability in celestial systems

Visualization techniques reveal manifold dynamics

Abstract

Invariant manifolds are the skeleton of the chaotic dynamics in Hamiltonian systems. In Celestial Mechanics, for instance, these geometrical structures are applied to a multitude of physical and practical problems, such as to the description of the natural transport of asteroids and to the construction of trajectories for artificial satellites. In this work, we use efficient numerical methods to visually illustrate the influence of invariant manifolds, which are associated with specific equilibrium points and unstable periodic orbits, in the dynamical properties of Hamiltonian systems. First, we investigate an area-preserving version of the two-dimensional H\'enon map. Later, we focus our investigation on the motion of a body with negligible mass that moves due to the gravitational attraction of both the Earth and the Moon. As a model, we adopt the planar circular restricted three-body problem, a near-integrable Hamiltonian system with two degrees of freedom. For both systems, we show how the selected invariant manifolds and the structure of the phase space evolve alongside each other. Our results contribute to the understanding of the connection between dynamics and geometry in Hamiltonian systems.