Coriolis acceleration Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-18
The Coriolis acceleration is the Coriolis force divided by the particle's mass:
It is therefore independent of mass for a specified relative velocity and angular velocity. This is one contribution to the acceleration measured in a rotating reference frame. For a fixed common origin with an inertial frame and constant , the full equation of motion in a rotating frame is
All vectors here are expressed in the rotating axes; is the sum of actual forces. An accelerating origin adds a translational apparent force, and time-dependent angular velocity also adds the Euler acceleration.
The factor two follows directly from the rotating-frame derivative formula. First . Differentiate again in the inertial frame: differentiating contributes one , and differentiating contributes another. Move both terms to the rotating side of Newton's second law to obtain the minus sign and the factor two. The centrifugal acceleration comes from the remaining double cross product.
Hill equations 2026-10-05
The unforced planar equation of motion in a rotating frame near a circular Kepler orbit has components and . They describe epicyclic motion and Keplerian shear; mutual gravity adds close-encounter forcing.
Newton's second law Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
In an inertial frame, a point mass of constant mass obeys
The net force is the sum of all forces acting on that body; momentum, velocity and acceleration refer to the same reference frame. A force changes velocity, rather than sustaining it: zero net force implies constant velocity, including a nonzero one. Doubling the net force at fixed mass doubles acceleration; doubling mass at fixed net force halves it. [ref]
For example, an otherwise balanced block of mass receives a constant horizontal net force for . Its acceleration is , so its velocity changes by . Equivalently, the impulse is , and . Starting from rest, its displacement during the pulse is . After the pulse, zero net force leaves it moving at constant velocity.
Applying the law therefore requires both a specification of the net force and initial conditions. In the harmonic oscillator example, the force is , so Newton's second law becomes a differential equation for position. In an accelerating reference frame, the measured relative acceleration includes a contribution from the frame's own motion; the equation of motion in a rotating frame illustrates the extra terms required.
Constant mass is essential to the displayed form. A variable-mass system exchanging matter also exchanges momentum; its balance includes the entering or leaving matter's velocity. Simply differentiating and equating it to external force on that open body can omit this flux. The existing variable-mass system equation specifies the needed correction.
In the 1687 Principia, Newton's second law was stated in terms of change of motion proportional to impressed force, directed along that force. Its original statement is verbal; the derivative equation above is modern notation. [ref]
The equation of motion in a rotating frame with constant angular velocity is
With and , this becomes
The given initial data make . For the complex coordinate , the planar equations combine into
Its characteristic roots are and . Applying , gives . The triple-angle identities reduce this astroid motion of a harmonic oscillator in a rotating frame to
It traces an astroid. Differentiating gives the relative speed
For , its maxima occur at , with
This is speed measured in the specified rotating frame. The same physical motion has inertial complex coordinate , an ellipse; its initial velocity is the frame-rotation contribution even though the initial relative velocity is zero.
Figure 1.
The oscillator's astroid in rotating coordinates, ellipse in inertial coordinates, and maxima of relative speed
. Details.
Apply the rotating-vector derivative rule first to the position vector and then to its velocity. Since is constant,
For example, the derivative of contributes , while that of contributes the other two terms. This is the equation of motion in a rotating frame. The mutual central forces are unchanged in form because rotations preserve lengths and differences of position vectors. Newton's second law for particle becomes
Set . The velocity-dependent Lorentz force is , and it cancels the Coriolis force . The remaining terms combine to and are quadratic in the magnetic field. Neglecting them gives
identical to the zero-field equations to first order. The Larmor theorem requires the common charge-to-mass ratio; a mixture with different ratios cannot use one rotating frame to cancel every magnetic term.
Use , , and . By the rotating-frame derivative formula, . Apply the product rule for the cross product and the same rotating-frame derivative formula again:
We have and , since . Therefore
Rearranging this identity into an equation of motion in a rotating frame produces the apparent Coriolis acceleration, Euler acceleration and centrifugal acceleration, with signs opposite to their corresponding terms on the right of this inertial acceleration identity. No translational term is needed because the two origins coincide.
Apply the rotating-frame derivative formula first to position and then to its inertial velocity:
The angular velocity is constant, so there is no term involving . By Newton's second law in the inertial frame, the inertial acceleration is . Rearrangement gives the equation of motion in a rotating frame:
The two additional accelerations are the Coriolis acceleration and centrifugal acceleration.
Let and , with . In the centre of mass frame the two primary distances are and . Applying Newton's law of universal gravitation and circular centripetal acceleration to the first primary gives , and hence
The same result follows from the second primary or from the relative two-body equation of motion.
A rotating-frame equilibrium has zero rotating-frame velocity, so its Coriolis force vanishes. Above the orbital plane both primaries have downward gravitational components; below it both have upward components. The centrifugal force has no component. More explicitly,
which vanishes only at for finite nonsingular points. Thus all equilibria lie in the orbital plane.
The equation of motion in a rotating frame for the dwarf is
On the orbital plane the centrifugal contribution is . Thus the rotating-frame effective potential is ; equilibria are exactly its stationary points. The Coriolis force affects motion about those equilibria but not their positions. This is the circular restricted three-body problem, with the dwarf treated as a test mass.
The printed energy unit has the wrong dimensions. The correct total energy unit is , or for specific energy; is an acceleration. Dividing by and measuring lengths in units of gives the dimensionless effective potential
The primary coordinates are and . Restricting to gives and
The absolute values are essential; dropping them would reverse the attraction on the left of a primary. On each of the intervals separated by the two primaries, decreases strictly from to . There is exactly one Collinear Lagrange point on each interval, a maximum along the direction.
For the inner Lagrange point, write with . For the L2 Lagrange point, write . The respective equations are
Balancing the leading terms gives . Therefore the small-mass-ratio collinear Lagrange points obey
The omitted displacement of the secondary is smaller than the stated error. The leading distance from the secondary is the dimensionless Hill radius.
For the L3 Lagrange point put . It lies to the left of both primaries, so
Expanding the two positive inverse-square factors gives and . Thus , so
All three have . The small- equalities in the paper are asymptotic expressions, not exact coordinates for finite mass ratio.
For the remaining Lagrange points, introduce plane polar coordinates about the first primary: , . Its distance to the second primary is , and
The angular stationary condition is . For an off-axis point and , so . The radial stationary condition becomes
Hence , and implies . The Triangular Lagrange points are exactly
Both triangles are equilateral. The collinear and off-axis calculations together exhaust the stationary points.
For the requested sketch, tends to at either primary and at large in-plane radius. Each Collinear Lagrange point is a saddle of the planar effective potential: its curvature is negative and its curvature is positive. To see the latter, let , and . At an inner point both distances are below one, so . At an exterior stationary point, use barycentric positions , and weights : the equation implies . To the right, the weighted sum is positive because the positive primary is closer; to the left it is negative because the negative primary is closer. Thus there as well, and .
At either Triangular Lagrange point, the planar Hessian is
Its trace is and determinant , so these are local maxima. Their height is . The sketch below uses a finite mass ratio to separate the five points clearly; its singular wells are clipped only for display. These curvature labels concern the effective potential, not a stability test that ignores the Coriolis force.
Figure 1.
Rotating binary effective-potential surface and contours at mass fraction 0.10, with all five Lagrange points marked
. Details.
For constant angular velocity, the equation of motion in a rotating frame is
For and , the planar equations combine to
The initial conditions give
Therefore
The maximum speed and, for , its times are
Rotating-frame effective potential Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-13
For uniform rotation, the Newtonian gravitational potential plus the centrifugal potential generates the non-Coriolis part of the equation of motion in a rotating frame. Stationary particles obey . The Coriolis force changes perturbation dynamics, so curvature of this potential alone is not a general rotating-frame stability criterion.