Nonholonomic Noether theorem and reduction of symmetries (Q1289579)

The Noether theorem which establishes the connection between the conservation laws and the symmetries of a variational problem gives deep insight into the structure of dynamical systems. In the framework of the Hamiltonian formulation, one can derive a useful necessary and sufficient condition for a function to be a constant of motion of a Lagrangian system subjected to nonlinear nonholonomic constraints. The discussion in this paper is mainly on the reduction of symmetries with conservation laws taken into account. For convenience, the author uses a noncanonical Hamiltonian formulation in the tangent bundle space. The symplectic form is obtained by the pull back of the canonical symplectic form by Legendre transformation. It is then not difficult to formulate and prove a nonholonomic analogue to the Noether theorem without the computation of the inverse Legendre transform. The author starts with a concrete phase space with the above-mentioned pull back of the canonical symplectic form. The Legendre transformation is assumed to be a diffeomorphism, and further assumptions are made on the Hessian of the Lagrangian and on the tangent bundle projection. With perfect constraints, the author obtains the Hamiltonian form of the equations of motion. A criterion for a function on the tangent space to be a constant of motion is proved. This is a generalization of previously known results for linear constraints. The author shows further that the group of symmetries of the theory has a connected normal subgroup. There are two stages in the reduction process: first, the reduction of the symmetries in the subgroup which ends up with a constrained Hamiltonian system in the reduced phase space, and second, the removal of the degrees of freedom corresponding to the residual symmetries in the complement factorized subgroup.