title: Crash test for the Copenhagen problem.
abstract: The Copenhagen problem is a simple model in celestial mechanics. It serves to investigate the behavior of a small body under the gravitational influence of two equally heavy primary bodies. We present a partition of orbits into classes of various kinds of regular motion, chaotic motion, escape and crash. Collisions of the small body onto one of the primaries turn out to be unexpectedly frequent, and their probability displays a scale-free dependence on the size of the primaries. The analysis reveals a high degree of complexity so that long term prediction may become a formidable task. Moreover, we link the results to chaotic scattering theory and the theory of leaking Hamiltonian systems.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Otto-Hahn-Allee, Universität Bremen, 28334 Bremen, Germany.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Nagler