Dynamical Systems Seminar – Arthur Limoge

Arthur Limoge is giving a talk at the Huxley Building on Tuesday 20 October, as part of the Dynamical Systems Seminar. He's speaking on The twist condition in the three-body problem, and the session runs from 13:00 to 14:00 BST in Room 145, on Imperial College London's South Kensington Campus.

The talk works with a method for finding periodic orbits of dynamical systems that goes back to Poincaré, and it all hinges on what's called a 'twist condition'. In the spatial (circular restricted) three-body problem, that condition is a geometric assumption on a four-dimensional symplectic manifold. Limoge will be presenting a conjecture about this twist condition, and if it turns out to be true, it would prove the existence of infinitely many periodic orbits — a problem that's remained open to this day.

It's the kind of thing that sounds like it belongs deep in a maths department, but Limoge is keeping it accessible. He's aiming to set it all out with minimal technical detail, so you can follow it even if you've got little or no background in differential geometry or physics. If you've ever wondered how three bodies moving under gravity can end up in a repeating loop, this is exactly where that conversation starts.

It's a free drop-in session, so there's no need to book ahead. It runs from 13:00 to 14:00 on Tuesday 20 October in Room 145 of the Huxley Building, South Kensington Campus.