Base-controlled mechanical systems and geometric phases (Q2479320)

The author studies mechanical systems with a principal fibre bundle \(Q\rightarrow Q/G\) as configuration space. He assumes that the motion in the base space is controlled in the sense that it is externally prescribed. The motion on the fibres is then induced by non-holonomic \(G\)-invariant constraints complementing the vertical bundle. The equations of motion are derived from the momentum map with variational techniques. The main part of the article is devoted to a detailed analysis of certain special cases where the motion can be factorised into a dynamical and a geometric part. In favourable circumstances the dynamical part admits further factorisation via special gauge choices. For this case explicit reconstruction phase formulae are given. Finally, some examples are studied: a vertical rotating disk, a ball on a rotating turntable, a non-holonomically constrained self-deforming body and a deforming body with dipolar magnetic moment in an external magnetic field.