Analysis of Families of Triple Close Approaches Occurring inStellar Systems in Three Dimensions (II)

This is the second paper of a trilogy dealing with the role of triple encounters with low initial velocities and equal masses in the evolution of stellar systems in three dimensional space. It shows how a condition of complete collapse may be perturbed to obtain well-established families of asymmetric triple close approaches with systematic regularity of escape with the formation of a binary. The main result is that when perturbation is introduced two close approaches called the first close approach and the second close approach occur in the same plane but the binary formed and the escaper are not in that plane. Further it is observed that the conjecture of Szebehely (1977) viz. `The measure of escaping orbits is significantly higher than the measure of stable orbits' is likely to be true. The third and last paper offers applications in stellar systems. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.