Perturbative manifolds and the Noether generators of \(n\)th-order Poisson equations (Q1710729)

The author considers a pseudo-Riemannian manifold \(M^{n}\) of dimension \(n\) endowed with a pseudo-Riemannian metric \(g_{ij}\), given in local coordinates \( x_{i}=x_{1},\dots ,x_{n}\), and the associated Poisson equation \(\square _{g_{ij}}u+f(u)=0\), where \(\square _{g_{ij}}u=g^{ij}u_{,ij}-g^{jk}\Gamma _{jk}^{i}(x^{k})u_{,i}\), \(\Gamma _{jk}^{i}\) denoting the Christoffel symbols. The author quotes from the paper by \textit{G. Bluman} [J. Math. Anal. Appl. 145, No. 1, 52--62 (1990; Zbl 0696.35005)] the structure of the symmetries of this equation: \(X=\xi ^{i}(x^{i})\partial _{x^{i}}+(\alpha (x^{i})u+\beta (x^{i}))\partial _{u}\) for smooth functions \(\alpha ,\beta \). He then introduces perturbations of the metric \(g\) through: \( g_{ij}=g0_{ij}+\varepsilon g1_{ij}+\varepsilon ^{2}g2_{ij}+\ldots +\varepsilon ^{n}gn_{ij}+O(\varepsilon ^{n+1})\) and he derives the Lagrangian associated to the perturbed Poisson equation linked to this perturbed metric: \(L(x^{i},u,u_{,i})=\varepsilon ^{\gamma }L_{\gamma }(x^{i},u,u_{,i})+O(\varepsilon ^{\gamma +1})\), for \(\gamma \leq n\), where \( L_{\gamma }(x^{i},u,u_{,i})=\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{g_{\gamma }}g_{\gamma }^{ij}u_{,i}u_{,j}-\sqrt{g_{\gamma }}F_{\gamma }(u)\), with \(F^{\prime }(u)=f(u)\). The first main result of the paper gives the expression of the Noether symmetries of order \(n\), when considering special \(n\)th-order approximate symmetry generators of the above Lagrangian. Still considering these special \(n\)th-order approximate symmetry generators of the Lagrangian, the author finally gives the structure of the associated conservation law. The paper ends with an example of a perturbed plane symmetric static metric.