Integrators for Lie-Poisson dynamical systems (Q1176815)

It is natural to ask if the techniques used to create symplectic integrators for Hamiltonian systems on symplectic spaces can be applied for the more general category of Lie-Poisson dynamical systems. Ge and Marsden have shown that reduction techniques can be applied to yield Lie- Poisson integrators for finite dimensional systems. To be implemented, this algorithm requires a coordinatization of the group. In many cases it is difficult to implement the defining relations of some subgroup of a matrix group. To overcome this difficulty, the authors use the exponential map and reformulate the problem in the Lie Algebra rather than in the group. The construction of Lie-Poisson integrators is then straightforward for regular quadratic Lie algebras and in the general case the construction uses an expansion of the solution of the Hamilton- Jacobi equation about the solution that generates the identity. In a last section the authors describe two algorithms that can be used to develop very fast Lie-Poisson integrators in some particular cases.