Pfaffians and the inverse problem for collinear central configurations

Abstract

Central configurations play an important role in the dynamics of the n-body problem: they occur as relative equilibria and as asymptotic configurations in colliding trajectories. We illustrate how they can be found as projective fixed points of self-maps defined on the shape space, and some results on the inverse problem in dimension 1, i.e. finding (positive or real) masses which make a given collinear configuration central. This survey article introduces readers to the recent results of the author, also unpublished, showing an application of the fixed point theory.