Computing choreographies
Abstract
Choreographies are periodic solutions of the n-body problem in which all of the bodies have unit masses, share a common orbit and are uniformly spread along it. In this talk, I will present an algorithm for numerical computation and stability analysis of choreographies. It is based on approximations by trigonometric polynomials, minimization of the action functional using a closed-form expression of the gradient, quasi-Newton methods, automatic differentiation and Floquet stability analysis.