We study the planar repulsive two-center Coulomb system in the presence of a uniform magnetic field perpendicular to the plane, taking the inter-center separation a and the magnetic field strength B as independent control parameters. The free-field system B=0 is Liouville integrable and the motion is unbounded. The magnetic confinement introduces nonlinear coupling that breaks integrability and gives rise to chaotic bounded dynamics. Using Poincaré sections and maximal Lyapunov exponents, we characterize the transition from regular motion at aB=0 to mixed regular–chaotic dynamics for aB≠0. To probe the recoverability of the dynamics, we apply sparse regression techniques to numerical trajectories and assess their ability to capture the equations of motion across mixed dynamical regimes. Our results clarify how magnetic confinement competes with two-center repulsive interactions in governing the emergence of chaos and delineate fundamental limitations of data-driven model discovery in nonintegrable Hamiltonian systems. We further identify an organizing mechanism whereby the repulsive two-center system exhibits locally one-center-like dynamics in the absence of any static confining barrier.
Quintanar et al. (2026) studied this question.