A Solvable N-body Problem of Goldfish Type Featuring N2 Arbitrary Coupling Constants

A N-body problem “of goldfish type” is introduced, the Newtonian (“acceleration equal force”) equations of motion of which describe the motion of N pointlike unit-mass particles moving in the complex z-plane. The model—for arbitrary N—is solvable, namely its configuration (positions and velocities of the N “particles”) at any later time t can be obtained from its configuration at the initial time by algebraic operations. It features specific nonlinear velocity-dependent many-body forces depending on N² arbitrary (complex) coupling constants. Sufficient conditions on these constants are identified which cause the model to be isochronous—so that all its solutions are then periodic with a fixed period independent of the initial data. A variant with twice as many arbitrary coupling constants, or even more, is also identified.