Secular dynamics for curved two-body problems

Abstract

Consider the dynamics of two point masses on a surface of constant curvature subject to an attractive force analogue of Newton's inverse square law. When the distance between the bodies is sufficiently small, the reduced equations of motion may be seen as a perturbation of an integrable system. We define suitable action-angle coordinates to average these perturbing terms and observe dynamical effects of the curvature on the motion of the two-bodies.