Periodic three-body orbits in the Coulomb potential

Abstract

We numerically discovered around 100 distinct nonrelativistic collisionless periodic three-body orbits in the Coulomb potential in vacuo, with vanishing angular momentum, for equal-mass ions with equal absolute values of charges. These orbits are classified according to their symmetry and topology, and a linear relation is established between the periods, at equal energy, and the topologies of orbits. Coulombic three-body orbits can be formed in ion traps, such as the Paul, or the Penning one, where one can test the period vs topology prediction.