Isolated Periodic Orbits and Stability in Separable Potentials

A method for determining the main families of isolated periodic orbits and their characteristic exponents in planar potentials which are separated by a point transformation is proposed. Since these orbits are continued analytically with the same stability, these results are persistent under small perturbations. The method is applied to the two fixed centers problem, the Paul trap and the dipole expansion of an electrostatic potential. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.