Persistence of saddle-center homoclinics in the planar elliptic restricted three-body problem

Let e>0e>0 be sufficiently small, let τ\tau be the time variable, and let Re,μR_{e,\mu} be the Hamiltonian of the planar elliptic restricted three-body problem, with L1L_1 denoting the periodic orbit that continues the circular-problem equilibrium. The time-2π2\pi map is taken on the four-dimensional cross-section {τ=0}\{\tau=0\}.

Persistence conjecture. For every small e>0e>0 there exists μ(e)\mu(e) for which the orbit L1L_1 has a homoclinic orbit. Moreover, there is a neighborhood UU of the curve μ=μ(e)\mu=\mu(e) such that for each (e,μ)U(e,\mu)\in U the time-2π2\pi map of Re,μR_{e,\mu} has a symplectic blender, and the orbit L1L_1 has a homoclinic orbit for a dense subset of UU.

This predicts persistence of the homoclinic orbit from the circular restricted three-body problem under small elliptic perturbations, together with the occurrence of symplectic blenders and homoclinic connections on a dense parameter subset. The supplied text presents this as reasonable to believe, and no resolution is given.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Dongchen Li and Dmitry Turaev, “Symplectic blenders near whiskered tori and persistence of saddle-center homoclinics”, arXiv:2603.20830 (2026).

Additional references

2 papers in this index state this conjecture (2015–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:1510.08938.

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