Finiteness of planar central configurations of five bodies for all positive masses: On Smale's sixth problem

Abstract

We prove that for every choice of five positive masses the planar five-body problem has only finitely many central configurations up to rotation, translation and scaling. This answers Smale's sixth problem for five bodies. Albouy and Kaloshin proved the statement for all masses outside a closed algebraic subset of codimension two of the mass space. We keep their classification of singular sequences and replace the construction of the exceptional set by a direct exclusion: we use finite boundary charts for seven of the eight diagrams that can carry an unbounded four-product, and an exhaustive order census for Diagram 5. We derive the necessary mass conditions where needed and show that no germ with an unbounded four-product lies on a curve of normalized central configurations through a positive configuration. Five diagrams are excluded for all complex germs, two on curves through real configurations, and one on curves through positive configurations. Parts of the argument are computer-assisted: exact algebra, interval arithmetic and exact linear programming.