New progress in the inverse problem in the calculus of variations (Q5964093)

This long paper discusses the inverse problem of the calculus of variations by studying the cases when some eigen co-distributions are integrable and some are not, using exterior differential systems (EDS) theory. On this way, a number of quite general results are obtained. Among these interesting theorems and propositions, Theorem 3.12 is particularly useful in indicating non-existence cases. In addition, it suggests a scheme to replace the four cases of Douglas in the treatment of the problem in arbitrary dimension (cf. [\textit{J. Douglas}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 50, 71--128 (1941; Zbl 0025.18102)]). For example, it is obtained that when the Jacobi endomorphism \(\Phi \) is diagonalisable over reals then the integrability of the co-distributions must be considered first and the termination of the differential step second; this scheme is detailed in Section 6.