Linear almost Poisson structures and Hamilton-Jacobi equation. Applications to nonholonomic mechanics (Q613107)

In this paper the authors adapt the standard Hamilton-Jacobi equations for systems without constraints to the nonholonomic systems, that is, those mechanical systems subject to linear constraints on the velocities. The framework is a vector bundle \(\tau _D:D\rightarrow Q\) such that its dual vector bundle \(\tau _{D^{*}}:D^{*}\rightarrow Q\) is endowed with a linear almost Poisson bracket \(\{\cdot ,\cdot\}_{D^{*}}\) (i.e. a linear bracket satisfying all the usual property of a Poisson bracket except the Jacobi identity). The authors introduce the notion of morphism preserving the Hamiltonian system \(h:D^{*}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\), which is useful to treat with reduction procedures for nonholonomic systems with symmetries. The main result of the paper is to obtain the Hamilton-Jacobi equation in this new framework, whose expression seems a natural extension of the classical Hamilton-Jacobi equation. Also, using the orbit theorem, the authors prove that the classical form of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation remains valid for a special class of completely nonholonomic mechanical systems. Furthermore, the above results are applied to the theory of mechanical systems subjected to linear nonholonomic constraints on a Lie algebroid. Finally, several illustrative examples are given.