Statistics, yokes and symplectic geometry (Q1383412)

A relationship between yokes and symplectic forms is established and explored. Every yoke on a manifold \(M\) gives rise to a symplectic form, at least on some neighbourhood of the diagonal of \(M\times M,\) and in some important cases on all of \(M\times M.\) By passing to germs, i.e., by identifying yokes or symplectic forms which agree in some neighbourhood of the diagonal, it is shown that normalised yokes are almost equivalent to symplectic forms of a certain type. Some uses of the symplectic form given by a yoke are considered. There is an analogy between conservative mechanics and the geometry of yokes in that symplectic forms play an important part in both areas. This analogy is used to transfer the duality between the Hamiltonian and Lagrangian versions of conservative mechanics to a construction for obtaining from any normalised yoke \(g\) another yoke \(\breve g,\) called the Lagrangian of \(g,\) which has the same metric as \(g\) and is, in some sense, close to the dual yoke \(g^*\) of \(g.\) Lie group actions on the manifold and the associated momentum map, which takes values in the dual of the appropriate Lie algebra, are considered. An outline version of some of the material presented in this paper is given by the authors in J. Stat. Plann. Inference 63, No. 2, 133-146 (1997).