Thursday, March 24, 2016

Beyond Hamiltonian and Lagrangian mechanics


Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations are the bedrock of particle and field theories, produce the same equations of motion, and are related through a Legendre transform. Are there more such mathematical objects that are equivalent, or are these two in some way unique? If so, why are there two equivalent systems, rather than a single (or more)?



Answer



There is also the Routhian formalism of mechanics which is described as being a hybrid of Lagrangian and hamiltonian mechanics. The Routhian is defined as R=ni=1pi˙qiL

You can learn more about it by clicking this link for Wikipedia's description of it.


Reading more in regards to the routhian because I was bored, I realized it is defined as the partial Legendre transform of the Lagrangian and also in the language of differential geometry it is defined similarly to the Lagrangian as Rμ:TMR

where Rμ(q,˙q)=L(q,˙q)A(q,˙q),μ
where A is the mechanical connection term. You can read more about it in this pdf.


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