Rotating saddle trap as Foucault's pendulum

One of the many surprising results found in the mechanics of rotating systems is the stabilization of a particle in a rapidly rotating planar saddle potential. Besides the counterintuitive stabilization, an unexpected precessional motion is observed. In this note we show that this precession is due to a Coriolis-like force caused by the rotation of the potential. To our knowledge this is the first example where such force arises in an inertial reference frame. We also propose an idea of a simple mechanical demonstration of this effect.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure

Linear stability of the Lagrangian triangle solutions for quasihomogeneous potentials

In this paper we study the linear stability of the relative equilibria for homogeneous and quasihomogeneous potentials. Firstly, in the case the potential is a homogeneous function of degree $-a$, we find that any relative equilibrium of the $n$-body problem with $a>2$ is spectrally unstable. We also find a similar condition in the quasihomogeneous case. Then we consider the case of three bodies and we study the stability of the equilateral triangle relative equilibria. In the case of homogeneous potentials we recover the classical result obtained by Routh in a simpler way. In the case of quasihomogeneous potentials we find a generalization of Routh inequality and we show that, for certain values of the masses, the stability of the relative equilibria depends on the size of the configuration.Comment: 21 pages 4 figure

Detectability of quasi-circular co-orbital planets: application to the radial velocity technique

Several celestial bodies in co-orbital configurations exist in the solar system. However, co-orbital exoplanets have not yet been discovered. This lack may result from a degeneracy between the signal induced by co-orbital planets and other orbital configurations. Here we determine a criterion for the detectability of quasi-circular co-orbital planets and develop a demodulation method to bring out their signature from the observational data. We show that the precision required to identify a pair of co-orbital planets depends only on the libration amplitude and on the planet's mass ratio. We apply our method to synthetic radial velocity data, and show that for tadpole orbits we are able to determine the inclination of the system to the line of sight. Our method is also valid for planets detected through the transit and astrometry techniques