Keplerian Action, Convexity Optimization, and the 4-Body Problem

Abstract

In this paper we introduce a method to construct periodic solutions for the $n$-body problem with only boundary and topological constraints. Our approach is based on some novel features of the Keplerian action functional, constraint convex optimization techniques, and variational methods. We demonstrate the strength of this method by constructing relative periodic solutions for the planar four-body problem within a special topological class, and our results hold for an open set of masses.