The geometry of a Lagrangian mechanical system is determined by its associated evolution semispray. We uniquely determine this semispray using the symplectic structure and the energy of the Lagrange space and the external force field. We study the variation of the energy and Lagrangian functions along the evolution and the horizontal curves and give conditions by which these variations vanish. We provide examples of mechanical systems which are dissipative and for which the evolution nonlinear connection is either metric or symplectic.
Lagrangian reduction of symmetric discrete mechanical systems: a survey
Universidad Nacional de Cuyo（门多萨国立大学）；CONICET（阿根廷国家科学研究委员会）；Instituto Balseiro（巴尔塞罗研究所）；Universidad Nacional de La Plata（拉普拉塔国立大学）；Facultad de Ingeniería Universidad Nacional de La Plata（拉普拉塔国立大学工程学院）；Centro de Matemática de La Plata (CMaLP)（拉普拉塔数学中心）；Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Universidad Nacional de La Plata（拉普拉塔国立大学理学院）
We deal with Lagrangian systems that are invariant under the action of a symmetry group. The mechanical connection is a principal connection that is associated to Lagrangians which have a kinetic energy function that is defined by a Riemannian metric. In this paper we extend this notion to arbitrary Lagrangians. We then derive the reduced Lagrange-Poincare equations in a new fashion and we show how solutions of the Euler-Lagrange equations can be reconstructed with the help of the mechanical connection. Illustrative examples confirm the theory.
In this work we introduce a category of discrete Lagrange--Poincare systems LP_d and study some of its properties. In particular, we show that the discrete mechanical systems and the discrete mechanical systems obtained by the Lagrangian reduction of symmetric discrete mechanical systems are objects in LP_d. We introduce a notion of symmetry groups for objects of LP_d and introduce a reduction procedure that is closed in the category LP_d. Furthermore, under some conditions, we show that the reduction in two steps (first by a closed normal subgroup of the symmetry group and then by the residua…
A solution for the Weinstein's Problem in the general framework of generalized Lie algebroids is the target of this paper. We present the mechanical systems called by use, mechanical (?; ?)-systems, Lagrange mechanical (?; ?)-systems or Finsler mechanical (?; ?)-systems and we develop their geometries. We obtain the canonical (?; ?)-semi(spray) associated to a mechanical (?; ?)-system. The Lagrange mechanical (?; ?)-systems are the spaces necessary to develop a Lagrangian formalism. We obtain the (?; ?)-semispray associated to a regular Lagrangian L and external force Fe and we derive the equa…
We prove a number of results relating various measures (volume, Legendrian index, stability index, and spectral curve genus) of the geometric complexity of special Lagrangian $T^2$-cones. We explain how these results fit into a program to understand the "most common" three-dimensional isolated singularities of special Lagrangian submanifolds in almost Calabi-Yau manifolds.
In this work we introduce a category $LDP_d$ of discrete-time dynamical systems, that we call discrete Lagrange--D'Alembert--Poincaré systems, and study some of its elementary properties. Examples of objects of $LDP_d$ are nonholonomic discrete mechanical systems as well as their lagrangian reductions and, also, discrete Lagrange-Poincaré systems. We also introduce a notion of symmetry group for objects of $LDP_d$ and a process of reduction when symmetries are present. This reduction process extends the reduction process of discrete Lagrange--Poincaré systems as well as the one defined for non…
In this paper, we review or introduce several differential structures on manifolds in the general setting of real and complex differential geometry, and apply this study to Teichmüller theory. We focus on bi-Lagrangian i.e. para-Kähler structures, which consist of a symplectic form and a pair of transverse Lagrangian foliations. We prove in particular that the complexification of a real-analytic Kähler manifold has a natural complex bi-Lagrangian structure. We then specialize to moduli spaces of geometric structures on closed surfaces, and show that old and new geometric features of these spac…
This paper deals with conservation laws for mechanical systems with nonholonomic constraints. It uses a Lagrangian formulation of nonholonomic systems and a Cartan form approach. We present what we believe to be the most general relations between symmetries and first integrals. We discuss the so-called nonholonomic Noether theorem in terms of our formalism, and we give applications to Riemannian submanifolds, to Lagrangians of mechanical type, and to the determination of quadratic first integrals.
This note surveys and compares results on the separation of variables construction for soliton solutions of curvature equations including the Kähler-Ricci flow and the Lagrangian mean curvature flow. In the last section, we propose some new generalizations in the Lagrangian mean curvature flow case.
We prove that if the unit codisc bundle of a closed Riemannian manifold embeds symplectically into a symplectic cylinder of radius one then the length of the shortest nontrivial closed geodesic is at most half the area of the unit disc.
New geometric structures that relate the lagrangian and hamiltonian formalisms defined upon a singular lagrangian are presented. Several vector fields are constructed in velocity space that give new and precise answers to several topics like the projectability of a vector field to a hamiltonian vector field, the computation of the kernel of the presymplectic form of lagrangian formalism, the construction of the lagrangian dynamical vector fields, and the characterisation of dynamical symmetries.
The inverse problem of the calculus of variations consists in determining if the solutions of a given system of second order differential equations correspond with the solutions of the Euler-Lagrange equations for some regular Lagrangian. This problem in the general version remains unsolved. Here, we contribute to it with a novel description in terms of Lagrangian submanifolds of a symplectic manifold, also valid under some adaptation for the non-autonomous version. One of the advantages of this new point of view is that we can easily extend our description to the study of the inverse problem …
Connecting ideas of geometric formulation of quantum mechanics with new results in symplectic geometry a new approach to geometrical quantization procedure is proposed. As a first result we verify that the correspondence between "classical" Poisson bracket and "quantum" one takes place.
We re-examine classical mechanics with both commuting and anticommuting degrees of freedom. We do this by defining the phase dynamics of a general Lagrangian system as an implicit differential equation in the spirit of Tulczyjew. Rather than parametrising our basic degrees of freedom by a specified Grassmann algebra, we use arbitrary supermanifolds by following the categorical approach to supermanifolds.
We consider Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs) as the boundaries of material subsets whose advective evolution is metastable under weak diffusion. For their detection, we first transform the Eulerian advection-diffusion equation to Lagrangian coordinates, in which it takes the form of a time-dependent diffusion or heat equation. By this coordinate transformation, the reversible effects of advection are separated from the irreversible joint effects of advection and diffusion. In this framework, LCSs express themselves as (boundaries of) metastable sets under the Lagrangian diffusion process.…
In this paper, we carry a detailed study of mechanical systems with configuration space $Q\longrightarrow Q/G$ for which the base $Q/G$ variables are being controlled. The overall system's motion is considered to be induced from the base one due to the presence of general non-holonomic constraints. It is shown that the solution can be factorized into dynamical and geometrical parts. Moreover, under favorable kinematical circumstances, the dynamical part admits a further factorization since it can be reconstructed from an intermediate (body) momentum solution, yielding a reconstruction phase fo…
In this paper, we describe a constrained Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism for the optimal control of nonholonomic mechanical systems. In particular, we aim to minimize a cost functional, given initial and final conditions where the controlled dynamics is given by nonholonomic mechanical system. In our paper, the controlled equations are derived using a basis of vector fields adapted to the nonholonomic distribution and the Riemannian metric determined by the kinetic energy. Given a cost function, the optimal control problem is understood as a constrained problem or equivalently, under some…
We study the tracking of a trajectory for a nonholonomic system by recasting the problem as a constrained optimal control problem. The cost function is chosen to minimize the error in positions and velocities between the trajectory of a nonholonomic system and the desired reference trajectory, both evolving on the distribution which defines the nonholonomic constraints. The problem is studied from a geometric framework. Optimality conditions are determined by the Pontryagin Maximum Principle and also from a variational point of view, which allows the construction of geometric integrators. Exam…
Following an earlier paper on the differential-geometric structure of the moduli space of special Lagrangian submanifolds in a Calabi-Yau manifold, we follow an analogous approach for compact complex Lagrangian submanifolds of a (Kählerian) complex symplectic manifold. The natural geometric structure on the moduli space is a special Kähler metric, but we offer a different point of view on the local differential geometry of these, based on the structure of a submanifold of $V\times V$ (where $V$ is a symplectic vector space) which is Lagrangian with respect to two constant symplectic forms. As …
We discuss two generalizations of the inverse problem of the calculus of variations, one in which a given mechanical system can be brought into the form of Lagrangian equations with non-conservative forces of a generalized Rayleigh dissipation type, the other leading to Lagrangian equations with so-called gyroscopic forces. Our approach focusses primarily on obtaining coordinate-free conditions for the existence of a suitable non-singular multiplier matrix, which will lead to an equivalent representation of a given system of second-order equations as one of these Lagrangian systems with non-co…
Bistable structures associated with non-linear deformation behavior, exemplified by the Venus flytrap and slap bracelet, can switch between different functional shapes upon actuation. Despite numerous efforts in modeling such large deformation behavior of shells, the roles of mechanical and nonlinear geometric effects on bistability remain elusive. We demonstrate, through both theoretical analysis and table-top experiments, that two dimensionless parameters control bistability. Our work classifies the conditions for bistability, and extends the large deformation theory of plates and shells.
The Hamilton-Jacobi problem is revisited bearing in mind the consequences arising from a possible bi-Hamiltonian structure. The problem is formulated on the tangent bundle for Lagrangian systems in order to avoid the bias of the existence of a natural symplectic structure on the cotangent bundle. First it is developed for systems described by regular Lagrangians and then extended to systems described by singular Lagrangians with no secondary constraints. We also consider the example of the free relativistic particle, the rigid body and the electron-monopole system.
We construct a lagrangian geometric formulation for first-order field theories using the canonical structures of first-order jet bundles, which are taken as the phase spaces of the systems in consideration. First of all, we construct all the geometric structures associated with a first-order jet bundle and, using them, we develop the lagrangian formalism, defining the canonical forms associated with a lagrangian density and the density of lagrangian energy, obtaining the {\sl Euler-Lagrange equations} in two equivalent ways: as the result of a variational problem and developing the {\sl jet fi…
The purpose of this paper is to describe geometrically discrete Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Mechanics on Lie groupoids. From a variational principle we derive the discrete Euler-Lagrange equations and we introduce a symplectic 2-section, which is preserved by the Lagrange evolution operator. In terms of the discrete Legendre transformations we define the Hamiltonian evolution operator which is a symplectic map with respect to the canonical symplectic 2-section on the prolongation of the dual of the Lie algebroid of the given groupoid. The equations we get include as particular cases the classic…
