Nonholonomic reduction (Q1322745)

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Nonholonomic reduction
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    Nonholonomic reduction (English)
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    16 June 1994
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    This paper addresses the problem of nonholonomic reduction of Hamiltonian systems in the presence of symmetry. The authors describe the structure of Hamiltonian systems with constraints in a manner that facilitates understanding of the reduction process. For simplicity of exposition, the authors examine only Hamiltonian systems that come from a Lagrangian system (of the form kinetic energy minus potential energy) where the Legendre transformation is a diffeomorphism and the constraints are independent of time. The reduction of nonholonomic systems by symmetry is formulated in such a way that it parallels the standard theory of reduction of symplectic manifolds with symmetry. In so doing, the authors show that the constraints in the Hamiltonian theory play a dual role in which they define both a constraint manifold and a horizontal distribution on which a distributional form of Hamilton's equations hold. The authors illuminate their results using the example of a free particle subjected to a nonholonomic constraint.
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    nonholonomic constraints
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    reduction by symmetry
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    Hamiltonian systems
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