scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1124115
Variational principles of physics (49S05) Differentiable maps on manifolds (58C25) Variational problems in applications to the theory of geodesics (problems in one independent variable) (58E10) Theory of singularities and catastrophe theory (58K99) Semiclassical techniques, including WKB and Maslov methods applied to problems in quantum theory (81Q20)
Let \({\mathcal P}{\mathbf M}^d\) be a space of paths \(x: [t_a,t_b]\to {\mathbf M}^d\) on a \(d\)-dimensional manifold \({\mathbf M}^d\). Consider the \(2d\)-dimensional subspace \(\mathcal U\) of critical points of an action functional \(S\) on \({\mathcal P}{\mathbf M}^{d}\) and the space \({\mathcal P}_{\mu,\nu}{\mathbf M}^d\) of paths satisfying \(d\) initial conditions \(\mu\) and \(d\) final conditions \(\nu\). The nature of the intersection \({\mathcal U}_{\mu,\nu} := {\mathcal P}_{\mu,\nu}{\mathbf M}^d \cap {\mathcal U}\) is the subject of physics on caustics. The paper presents a survey of mathematical aspects of modern physics on caustics. Two different approaches are given. The first one is classical methods of the calculus of variations for \(S\), including analysis of degenerate critical points of \(S\) based on a variant of the Morse lemma. Another one is by functional integration and semiclassical approximation. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0878.00071].
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