Covariant Hamilton equations for field theory (Q4947792)

The authors study the relations between the equations of first-order Lagrangian field theory and the covariant Hamilton equations on a finite-dimensional phase space. More precisely, they examine the Euler-Lagrange and Cartan equations in Lagrangian formalism, the Hamilton-DeDonder equations in multisymplectic Hamilton formalism, the covariant Hamilton equations and the constrained Hamilton equations in polysymplectic Hamiltonian formalism. If the Lagrangian is hyper-regular, all these equations are equivalent. The authors investigate the relations between them for degenerate semiregular and almost regular Lagrangians: 1) they conclude that the covariant Hamilton equations contain additional conditions in comparison with Euler-Lagrange and Cartan equations; 2) for almost regular Lagrangians they introduce constrained Hamilton equations that are weaker then the Hamilton equations restricted to the Lagrangian constrained space, they are equivalent to the Hamilton-DeDonder equations, and quasi-equivalent to the Cartan equations. A detailed analysis of the degenarate quadratic Lagrangian is performed. It is shown that main features are not directly related to gauge invariance but are common to all models with such Lagrangians. Additionally, the authors describe in detail the relations between degenerate Lagrangians, associated Hamilton forms and Lagrangian with gauge fixing terms.