Instability criterion for periodic solutions with spatio-temporal symmetries in Hamiltonian systems (Q2412572)

The authors begin by introducing the standard set-up of equivariant Hamiltonian systems. Then they discuss periodic solutions with spatio-temporal symmetry group obtained via minimization of an action functional. They study a subspace \(W\) linked to the boundary conditions of the variational problem and give a characterization which guarantees that \(W\) is a Lagrangian subspace. Precisely, they show that for a class of periodic orbits with time-reserving symmetry \(W\) is a Lagrangian subspace. Finally, they prove that a periodic solution of a reversible equivariant Hamiltonian system, obtained as a minimizer of the action functional, is unstable if \(W\) is a Lagrangian subspace with no focal points on the time interval defined by the boundary conditions and the second variation restricted to \(W\) at the minimizer has positive directions.