Hamiltonization and integrability of the Chaplygin sphere in \(\mathbb R^{n}\) (Q613614): Difference between revisions

This interesting paper is devoted to the classical nonholonomic Chaplygin sphere problem. The author considers a natural \(n\)-dimensional generalization of the classical model. The \(n\)-dimensional Chaplygin sphere describes the rolling without slipping of an \(n-1\)-dimensional hyperspace \(\mathcal{H}\) in \(\mathbb R^{n}\). This problem was studied by \textit{Y. N. Fedorov} and \textit{V. V. Kozlov} [in: Dynamical systems in classical mechanics. Transl., Ser. 2, Am. Math. Soc. 168(25), 141--171 (1995; Zbl 0859.70010)]. This is an \(\mathbb R^{n-1}\)-Chaplygin system. It means that the kinetic energy and the nonholonomic distribution \(\mathcal{D}\) are invariant with respect to the translations of the ball over the hyperplane \(\mathcal{H}\). After \(\mathbb R^{n-1}\)-reduction, it becomes almost Hamiltonian system written in the form \(i_{X_{\text{red}}}(\Omega +\Xi )=dH_{\text{red}}\) on the cotangent bundle of the orthogonal group \(SO(n)\). Here, \(\Omega \) is the canonical symplectic form on \(T^{\ast }(Q/K)\) (\(Q\) an \(n\)-dimensional Riemannian manifold with nonnegative metric, \(K\) a Lie group, \(\mathcal{D}\) is a \(K\)-invariant collection of horizontal spaces of a principal connection), and \(\Xi \) is a semibasic form depending on the momentum mapping \(\Phi_{K}\) and the curvature of the connection \(\mathcal{D}\). The author proves that for a specific choice of the inertia operator, the restriction of the generalized problem onto a zero value of the \(SO(n-1)\)-momentum mapping becomes an integrable Hamiltonian system after an appropriate time reparametrization. However, the general problem of the integrability and the Hamiltonization is still unsolved so far.