Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2609.10847

The three-vortex system: Hopf fibration, symplectic reduction, and near-collisions

Thierry Gallay·Vladimir Sverak
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

We study the dynamics of collisions and near-collisions in the system of three point vortices in the plane. The dynamics is known to be completely integrable and can be reduced to the study of Hamiltonian systems on two-dimensional symplectic leaves. This still allows for interesting behavior of the solutions, various aspects of which have been investigated in a large body of work by many authors. Our focus will be on collisions and the possibility of their regularization through perturbations of suitable parameters of the system. We will use the reduced coordinate given by $\zeta=(z_2-z_1)/(z_3-z_1)$, where $z_1,z_2,z_3$ are the complex numbers representing the positions of the vortices. This choice seems very natural, although we have not come across it in the existing literature on the topic. Some of our results concerning the near-collision behavior appear to be new, and we also prove inequalities between critical energy values that we have not found in the literature. The calculations we do to analyze the collisions and near-collisions also reproduce various classical results that were previously obtained by other authors using different coordinates, and parts of the paper therefore have an expository character.

Explore related subjects

math.DSphysics.flu-dyn

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Thierry Gallay, Vladimir Sverak. 2026-09-09. The three-vortex system: Hopf fibration, symplectic reduction, and near-collisions. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.10847

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Admissible Fourier Lengths, KAM Reducibility, and Spectral Applications

We develop a perturbative KAM reducibility theory for one-frequency $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})$ cocycles based on an admissible Fourier length $\ell$. The regularity relevant to the iteration is measured by positive adapted Fourier width rather than ordinary smoothness in the Euclidean length $|n|$. The same length governs Fourier decay, truncation and resonance scales, and the arithmetic condition controlling the small divisors. This framework contains the classical analytic and Gevrey settings, while non-monotone choices of $\ell$ allow classical nowhere differentiable Weierstrass-type perturbations and continuous perturbations outside every positive H\"older class. As spectral applications, we obtain purely absolutely continuous spectrum for every phase and $1/2$-H\"older continuity of the integrated density of states for the associated quasiperiodic Schr\"odinger operators. The Aubry dual has pure point spectrum for Lebesgue almost every dual phase, with eigenfunctions exponentially localized in the metric induced by $\ell$. We also construct nowhere differentiable quasiperiodic potentials with purely absolutely continuous Cantor spectrum.

math.DS↗
arXiv2026

Dynamics inside the attracting basins of some skew products

Polynomial skew products in $\mathbb{C}^2$ are maps of the form $F(z,w)=(P(z),Q(z,w))$, where $P$ and $Q$ are polynomials. Their local dynamics have been widely investigated. In this paper, we study the global dynamics inside Fatou components of some skew products. We consider all the inverse images in a Fatou component of a given point and use the Kobayashi metric to measure the distance between points. In the cases we consider, there are always arbitrarily large Kobayashi balls in the complement of these inverse sets.

math.DS↗
arXiv2026

Ergodicity of dynamical systems without uniqueness of orbits

Recently, there has been considerable interest in the study of non-deterministic dynamical systems. To analyze the chaotic behavior of such systems from a measure-theoretic viewpoint, it is desirable to consider ergodicity. However, the classical definition of ergodicity involves invariant sets, whose definition is not unique for non-deterministic dynamical systems. Thus, we are led to the question of which invariance yields an interesting definition of ergodicity. Here, we propose a definition based on the strong backward invariance and show that analogs of classical results hold. We also consider implications of the Birkhoff ergodic theorem for systems without uniqueness of orbits.

math.DS↗