Properties of some dynamical systems for three collapsing inelastic particles

Abstract: In this article we continue the study of the collapse of three inelastic particles in dimension $d \geq 2$, complementing the results we obtained in its companion paper. We focus on the particular case of the nearly-linear inelastic collapse, when the order of collisions becomes eventually the infinite repetition of the period $0-1$, $0-2$, under the assumption that the relative velocities of the particles (with respect to the central particle $0$) do not vanish at the time of collapse. Taking as starting point the full dynamical system that describes two consecutive collisions of the nearly-linear collapse, we derive formally a two-dimensional dynamical system, called the two-collision mapping. This mapping governs the evolution of the variables of the full dynamical system. We show in particular that in the so-called Zhou-Kadanoff regime, the orbits of the two-collision mapping can be described in full detail. We study rigorously the two-collision mapping, proving that the Zhou-Kadanoff regime is stable and locally attracting in a certain region of the phase space of the two-collision mapping. We describe all the fixed points of the two-collision mapping in the case when the norms of the relative velocities tend to the same positive limit. We establish conjectures to characterize the orbits that verify the Zhou-Kadanoff regime, motivated by numerical simulations, and we prove these conjectures for a simplified version of the two-collision mapping.