Saturday, October 20, 2018

classical mechanics - Relation between (super)integrability and closed orbits


Inspired by this recent question, I would like to understand from a more general and mathematical perspective why closed orbits are only found for the Kepler (V(r)1/r) or harmonic (V(r)r2) potential problems, as follows from Bertrand's theorem.


There are two aspects that make these problems special, which I suspect may be related to the closed-orbit property. First, both problems are superintegrable. This property sits intuitively well with the idea that phase-space orbits should close "as quickly as possible", thus implying that real-space orbits close after a single revolution. Second, each problem possesses an additional "unexpected" conserved quantity, due to a larger symmetry of the problem than the obvious O(3). For the Kepler problem, this is the Runge-Lenz vector, related to the O(4) symmetry of the Hamiltonian. Meanwhile, the harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian conserves the Fradkin tensor: Fij=pipjmω2+mω2qiqj,

which is related to an SU(3) symmetry. In fact these symmetries and corresponding conserved quantities exist for any central field problem (D. M. Fradkin, Prog. Theor. Phys. 37 (1967), p.798). However the conserved quantities only take a "nice" form for the Kepler and harmonic problems, which also allows the corresponding quantum problems to be diagonalised exactly by symmetry arguments alone.


These considerations motivate the following question:



What specific physical/mathematical feature(s) do these two problems share that gives them the property of closed orbits? Does this feature bear relevance to the quantum counterpart?





No comments:

Post a Comment

classical mechanics - Moment of a force about a given axis (Torque) - Scalar or vectorial?

I am studying Statics and saw that: The moment of a force about a given axis (or Torque) is defined by the equation: $M_X = (\vec r \times \...