The geometry of higher-order Hamilton spaces. Applications to Hamiltonian mechanics (Q1411790): Difference between revisions

The book is devoted to an extensive study of formal-geometric properties of higher-order nondegenerate one-dimensional variational integrals. Together with the higher-order Lagrange spaces also the dual Hamilton spaces are included by using the higher-order Legendre transformation. The author's approach is useful for the construction of geometric models in theoretical physics (employing various connections, torsions and curvatures) but applications in the classical calculus of variations (the extremality, inverse problems, degenerate problems, presence of differential constraints) will probably cause much difficulties. We review the most fundamental concepts of the book. In the Lagrange approach, the underlying manifold is the \(k\)-accelerations bundle \((T^k M,\pi^k, M)\) equipped with the autonomous Lagrangian \(L(x,y^{(1)},\dots, y^{(k)})\), where \(x= (x^1,\dots, x^n)\), \(y^{(h)}= (y^{(h)1},\dots, y^{(h)n})\), \(y^{(h)i}= {1\over n!} d^h x^i/dt^h\). The Hamilton theory is developed in the space \((T^{* k}, \pi^{* k},m)\), \(T^{*k}= T^{k-1} M\times T^* M\), equipped with coordinates \((x, y^{(1)},\dots, y^{(k- 1)},p)\) where \(p= (p^1,\dots, p^n)\). The Legendre mapping \(T^k M\to T^{*k}M\) is defined by the momenta \(p^i= {1\over 2} \partial L/\partial k^{(k)i}\) and leads to the corresponding Hamilton function \(H(x,y^{(1)},\dots, y^{(k- 1)},p)\) on \(T^{*k}M\). The Finsler spaces are the particular case when \(L\) is homogeneous with respect to the accelerations \(y^{(1)},\dots, y^{(k)}\) and if moreover the functions \(\partial^2 L/\partial y^{(k)i}\partial y^{(k)j}\) do not depend on accelerations, the author speaks of generalized Riemannian spaces. The dual concepts are called Cartan spaces. The corresponding Hamilton counterparts are obtained by the Legendre mapping. One can observe that only the \(k\)-accelerations undergo the transformation. The higher-order Euler-Lagrange system turns into the dual system called Hamilton-Jacobi (it has nothing in common with the classical concept denoting certain first-order partial differential equations), also the connections are focused to the higher-order derivatives (they are subbundles of dimension \(n\) of \((k-1)\)-accelerations) and the generalized Poincaré-Cartan forms marginally appearing in the book are of the analogous nature. Contents: Geometry of \(k\)-tangent bundle, higher-order Lagrange spaces, Finsler spaces, dual \(k\)-tangent bundle, variational problem for the Hamiltonians, semisprays and nonlinear connections, connections on the dual space, Hamilton spaces, subspaces of the Hamilton spaces (including the Gauss-Weingarten and Gauss-Codazzi equations), Cartan spaces, generalizations. The book is precisely written, very clear, in principle self-contained and can be understood by nonspecialists.