A classical particle with spin realized by reduction of a nonlinear nonholonomic constraint (Q1290347)

Consider a uniformly charged spherically symmetric rigid body with a fixed centre of mass; its configuration space is \(SO(3)\). If the body is subjected to a constant magnetic field, its angular momentum is not conserved but the magnitude of the angular momentum is. The authors study such a system with preassigned value for the conserved quantity by regarding it as a mechanical system with a non-linear non-holonomic constraint. Although the unconstrained Hamiltonian vector field \(X_h\) then is tangent to the constraint submanifold \(M\), its restriction to \(M\) does not belong to the constraint distribution, which pointwise is a symplectic subspace of the tangent space to \(SO(3)\times so(3)\). The authors then show that, by leaving out the symplectic orthogonal complement of \(X_h\), we have a non-holonomic system with symmetry which allows for a suitable reduction procedure. It is shown that the reduced dynamics is the same as the one which would follow from a Marsden-Weinstein reduction. If \({\mathbb R}^3\) is added to the configuration space, i.e. if the centre of mass of the body is allowed to move, a completely analogous procedure applies and is shown to lead to the same result as the Souriau model for a moving classical non-relativistic particle with spin.