Non-integrability of the restricted three-body problem

Abstract

Abstract The problem of non-integrability of the circular restricted three-body problem is very classical and important in the theory of dynamical systems. It was partially solved by Poincaré in the nineteenth century: he showed that there exists no real-analytic first integral which depends analytically on the mass ratio of the second body to the total and is functionally independent of the Hamiltonian. When the mass of the second body becomes zero, the restricted three-body problem reduces to the two-body Kepler problem. We prove the non-integrability of the restricted three-body problem both in the planar and spatial cases for any non-zero mass of the second body. Our basic tool of the proofs is a technique developed here for determining whether perturbations of integrable systems which may be non-Hamiltonian are not meromorphically integrable near resonant periodic orbits such that the first integrals and commutative vector fields also depend meromorphically on the perturbation parameter. The technique is based on generalized versions due to Ayoul and Zung of the Morales–Ramis and Morales–Ramis–Simó theories. We emphasize that our results are not just applications of the theories.