Kowalevski's analysis of the swinging Atwood's machine

Abstract

We study the Kowalevski expansions near singularities of the swinging Atwood's machine. We show that there is a infinite number of mass ratios $M/m$ where such expansions exist with the maximal number of arbitrary constants. These expansions are of the so--called weak Painlevé type. However, in view of these expansions, it is not possible to distinguish between integrable and non integrable cases.

30 pages