A modified formal Lagrangian formulation for general differential equations (Q2135547)

Noether's theorem is a powerful tool that relates symmetry groups to conservation laws for systems of differential equations arising from a variational principle. It is possible to apply this result for arbitrary systems of differential equations that are not related to a Lagrangian function by considering a formal variational structure. Any system of differential equations conjugated with its adjoint equation admits a formal Lagrangian function, provided that the number of equations in the system is equal to the number of dependent variables. The new system inherits the symmetries of the original one and, when there exists an equivalence between the original system and its adjoint, the conservation laws can also be related through that equivalence. However, it is not always possible to find a substitution that guarantees the equivalence of the systems. In the paper under review, the following modified formal variational structure is proposed. Consider the system of \(s\)th-order differential equations \[ F_\alpha(x,[u] ), \; \alpha=1, \ldots, q,\tag{1} \] where \(x\in \mathbb{R}^p\) represent the independent variables, \(u\in \mathbb{R}^q\) the dependent variables and \([u]\) the sequence of \(u\) and its partial derivatives of order \(1, 2, \ldots, s\). Introduce the dependent variables \(v\in \mathbb{R}^q\) and the formal Lagrangian function \[ L(x, [u,v])= \sum _\alpha v^\alpha F_\alpha. \] When there exists a function \(L_0(x,[u])\) such that \[ \hat{L}(x, [u,v])= \sum _\alpha v^\alpha F_\alpha+L_0(x,[u]) \] is the Lagrangian of a system of differential equations that reduce to (1) through the substitution \(v=u\), then \(\hat{L}(x, [u,v])\) is called a \textit{modified formal Lagrangian function}. \(L_0(x,[u])\) is the corresponding \textit{balance function}. The existence of a generic modified Lagrangian function given by the balance function \(L_0(x,[u])=-\sum _\alpha v^\alpha F_\alpha\) is guaranteed. It is proved that, if the system (1) is totally non-degenerate and analytic, the modified Lagrangian function inherits the symmetries of (1). These results are applied to two concrete examples from physics and fluid mechanics.