Moving frames for cotangent bundles (Q1853814)

A powerful tool in Riemannian geometry is the Cartan's method of moving frames. In this paper this method is used in the framework of Hamiltonian dynamics on cotangent bundles and on subbundles of cotangent bundles defined by linear nonholonomic constraints. The basic formalism, in which a co-frame on the cotangent bundle (and its dual) is defined, is described in Section 2. Using the previous results, an expression for the canonical symplectic form (and the Poisson bracket) on the cotangent bundle is derived. As a first application of the formalism, it is considered the case in which the configuration manifold is a Lie group. A second application is given for the case of principal bundles with a principal connection. Finally, in Section 5, the method of moving frames is applied to systems with nonholonomic constraints linear in the velocities, where the latter determine a subbundle of the cotangent bundle. An ``operational system'' is constructed for the dynamics and the almost Poisson structure induced on the constraint submanifold is computed.