Variational Methods in Celestial Mechanics
June 9 to June 14, 2003
at the
American Institute of Mathematics,
San Jose, California
organized by
Richard Montgomery and Alain Chenciner
Original Announcement
This workshop The focus of this workshop, sponsored by AIM and the NSF, is variational
methods in celestial mechanics, more precisely minimization of the
action in the presence of symmetries. Using the direct method a number
of new orbits have been established over the last three years. In the
workshop we will aim to summarize the state of knowledge to date and
pose problems within the N-body problem which may be accessible to
variational methods. We shall in particular address the following
problem. Is it true that for the planar problem, in contrast to the
spatial one, minimizing methods are useful only when groups of bodies
have equal masses?
Material from the workshop
A list of participants.
The workshop schedule.
A report on the workshop activities.