The fate of Hamilton's Hodograph in Special and General Relativity

Abstract

The hodograph of a non-relativistic particle motion in Euclidean space is the curve described by its momentum vector. For a general central orbit problem the hodograph is the inverse of the pedal curve of the orbit, (i.e. its polar reciprocal), rotated through a right angle. Hamilton showed that for the Kepler/Coulomb problem, the hodograph is a circle whose centre is in the direction of a conserved eccentricity vector. The addition of an inverse cube law force induces the eccentricity vector to precess and with it the hodograph. The same effect is produced by a cosmic string. If one takes the relativistic momentum to define the hodograph, then for the Sommerfeld (i.e. the special relativistic Kepler/Coulomb problem) there is an effective inverse cube force which causes the hodograph to precess. If one uses Schwarzschild coordinates one may also define a a hodograph for timelike or null geodesics moving around a black hole. Iheir pedal equations are given. In special cases the hodograph may be found explicitly. For example the orbit of a photon which starts from the past singularity, grazes the horizon and returns to future singularity is a cardioid, its pedal equation is Cayley's sextic the inverse of which is Tschirhausen's cubic. It is also shown that that provided one uses Beltrami coordinates, the hodograph for the non-relativistic Kepler problem on hyperbolic space is also a circle. An analogous result holds for the the round 3-sphere. In an appendix the hodograph of a particle freely moving on a group manifold equipped with a left-invariant metric is defined.