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Speaker:
Professor Kuo-Chang Chen 陳國璋 (NTHU)
Time:
PM 1:30~2:30,
Nov. 16 (Thursday), 2006
Topic:
The
Kepler problem with boundary constraints
Abstract:
The Newtonian 2-body problem is also called the Kepler problem in
honor of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) for his discovery of three laws of
planetary motion, based on which Newton deduced in 1687 the celebrated
law of universal gravitation. It is widely considered a well-understood
problem, as solving it with given initial data and proving Kepler’s three
laws require nothing more than tools from elementary calculus. In this
talk I will present a completely different approach which gives us more
insights into Keplerian orbits and enables us to explore the n-body
problem from a new perspective. Our approach, based on Gordon’s work in
1977 which shows a minimizing property of elliptical Keplerian orbits, is
to treat the Kepler problem as a variational problem with free boundary
constraints.
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