title: Chaos in a relativistic 3-body self-gravitating system.
abstract: We consider the 3-body problem in relativistic lineal [i.e., (1+1)-dimensional] gravity and obtain an exact expression for its Hamiltonian and equations of motion. While general-relativistic effects yield more tightly bound orbits of higher frequency compared to their nonrelativistic counterparts, as energy increases we find in the equal-mass case no evidence for either global chaos or a breakdown from regular to chaotic motion, despite the high degree of nonlinearity in the system. We find numerical evidence for mild chaos and a countably infinite class of nonchaotic orbits, yielding a fractal structure in the outer regions of the Poincaré plot.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Burnell
authors.forename: R B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Mann
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ohta