{"paper":{"title":"Metric cones, N-body collisions, and Marchal's lemma","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["math.DG"],"primary_cat":"math.DS","authors_text":"Richard Montgomery","submitted_at":"2018-04-09T15:36:14Z","abstract_excerpt":"Marchal's lemma is the basic tool for eliminating collisions when using the direct method of the calculus of variations to establish existence of \"designer\" solutions to the classical N-body problem. Our goal here is to understand why Marchal's lemma holds, by taking a metric geometry perspective and employing the Jacobi-Maupertuis [JM] metric reformulation of mechanics. Using analysis inspired by the conical metric nature of the standard Kepler problem at zero-energy, we are able to manufacture potentials, or \"counterexamples\", for which Marchal's lemma fails. These counterexamples overlap si"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1804.03059","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}