Escape time from potential wells of strongly nonlinear oscillators with slowly varying parameters.
For a satellite about an oblate planet in rotation about its axis of greatest inertia, conditions are given under which there may appear, in a frame fixed in the planet, two positions of equilibria with characteristic exponents that are purely imaginary. In which case, after appropriate normalization by Lie transformation executed mechanically through a symbolic algebraic processor, the theorem of Arnold about non definite quadratic forms is applied. It is concluded that the equilibria are stable...