1206.4449 (Jürgen Struckmeier)

Ultimate generalization of Noether's theorem in the realm of Hamiltonian
point dynamics    [PDF]

Jürgen Struckmeier

Noether's theorem in the realm of point dynamics establishes the correlation of a constant of motion of a Hamilton-Lagrange system with a particular symmetry transformation that preserves the form of the action functional. Although usually derived in the Lagrangian formalism, the natural context for deriving Noether's theorem for first-order Lagrangian systems is the Hamiltonian formalism. The reason is that the class of transformations that leave the action functional invariant coincides with the class of canonical transformations. As a result, any invariant of a Hamiltonian system can be correlated with a symmetry transformation simply by means of the canonical transformation rules. As this holds for any invariant, we thereby obtain the most general representation of Noether's theorem. In order to allow for symmetry mappings that include a transformation of time, we must refer to the extended Hamiltonian formalism. This formalism enables us to define generating functions of canonical transformations that also map time and energy in addition to the conventional mappings of canonical space and momentum variables. As an example for the generalized Noether theorem, a manifest representation of the symmetry transformation is derived that corresponds to the Runge-Lenz invariant of the Kepler system.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.4449