On the number of weakly Noetherian constants of motion of nonholonomic systems (Q2380716)

The authors show that under a certain smoothness hypothesis, the number of functionally independent smooth local weakly Noetherian constants of motion of a holonomic system whose Hamiltonian is invariant under a lifted action is given by the corank of the involutive closure \(\Delta^\infty\) of a certain distribution \(\Delta\) on the constraint manifold. The effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated on few sample cases in which this corank can be determined analytically (a vertical disk with various symmetry groups) and to a more complex case where the analysis has to be carried over using symbolic manipulation software (a heavy ball rolls on a surface of revolution).