Numerical analysis of a class of planar three-body systems with nonzero angular momentums

Heinamaki et al. have considered the dynamical evolution of a class of planar three-body systems in which the three bodies have equal masses and the total angular momentum is zero. This paper extends the study to systems with a nonzero total angular momentum. We traced the dynamical evolution of systems in four selected homology drops, each one in the four characteristic regions of the homology map. Our results are similar to Heinamaki et al. ʹs in regard to the way the homology drops evolve, but are different in regard to the time variation of the number of surviving systems. We found (i) that the mean lifetime is different for systems starting from different regions, and (ii) that the number of bound systems decreases exponentially with time.