Cocircular relative equilibria of four vortices

Abstract

We study the cocircular relative equilibria (planar central configurations) in the four-vortex problem using methods suggested by the study of cocircular central configurations in the Newtonian four-body problem in recent work of Cors and Roberts. Using mutual distance coordinates, we show that the set of four-vortex relative equilibria is a two-dimensional surface with boundary curves representing kite configurations, isosceles trapezoids, and degenerate configurations with one zero vorticity. We also show that there is a constraint on the signs of the vorticities in these configurations; either three or four of the vorticities must have the same sign, in contrast to the noncocircular cases studied by Hampton, Roberts, and Santoprete.