Viscosity solutions and hyperbolic motions: a new PDE method for the $N$-body problem

Abstract

We prove for the $N$-body problem the existence of hyperbolic motions for any prescribed limit shape and any given initial configuration of the bodies. The energy level $h>0$ of the motion can also be chosen arbitrarily. Our approach is based on the construction of global viscosity solutions for the Hamilton-Jacobi equation $H(x,d_xu)=h$. We prove that these solutions are fixed points of the associated Lax-Oleinik semigroup. The presented results can also be viewed as a new application of Marchal's theorem, whose main use in recent literature has been to prove the existence of periodic orbits.