Moments, equilibrium equations, and mutual distances

Abstract We review and develop the classical theory of moments of configurations of weighted points with a focus on systems with an identically vanishing first moment. The latter condition produces equations for equilibrium configurations of systems of interacting particles under the sole condition that interactions are between pairs of particles and along the lines connecting such pairs. Complying external forces are admitted, so the description of some dynamical equilibrium configurations, such as relative equilibria in Celestial Mechanics, is included in our approach. Moments provide a unified framework for equilibrium problems in arbitrary dimensions. The equilibrium equations are homogeneous and invariant by isometries (for interactions depending only on mutual distances), and are obtained through simple algebraic procedures requiring neither reduction by isometries nor a variational principle for their determination. Our equations include the renowned set of n -body central configuration equations by A. Albouy and A. Chenciner. These equations are extended to a rather broad class of equilibrium problems, and new equilibrium equations written in terms of mutual distances are introduced. We also apply moments to the theory of constraints for mutual distances of configurations of fixed dimension, and for cospherical configurations, thus re-obtaining and adding to classical results by A. Cayley and successors. For the sake of concreteness, novel sets of central configurations equations are provided.