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Hamiltonian system

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediah Jump to: navigation, search This article is about the classical theory. For other uses, see Hamiltonian. A Hamiltonian system is a dynamical system governed by Hamilton's equations. In physics, this dynamical system describes the evolution of a physical system such as a planetary system or an electron in an electromagnetic field. These systems can be studied in both Hamiltonian mechanics and dynamical systems theory.

Contents

1 Overview 2 Time independent Hamiltonian system o 2.1 Example 3 Symplectic structure 4 Examples 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

Overview
Informally, a Hamiltonian system is a mathematical formalism developed by Hamilton to describe the evolution equations of a physical system. The advantage of this description is that it gives important insight about the dynamics, even if the initial value problem can not be solved analytically. One example is the planetary movement of three bodies: even if there is no simple solution to the general problem, Poincar showed for the first time that it exhibits deterministic chaos. Formally, a Hamiltonian system is a dynamical system completely described by the scalar function , the Hamiltonian.[1] The state of the system, , is described by the

generalized coordinates 'momentum' and 'position' where both and are vectors with the same dimension N. So, the system is completely described by the 2N dimensional vector

and the evolution equation is given by the Hamilton's equations: .

The trajectory

is the solution of the initial value problem defined by the Hamilton's .

equations and the initial condition

Time independent Hamiltonian system


If the Hamiltonian is not time dependent, i.e. if time[1]: derivation[show] and thus the Hamiltonian is a constant of motion, whose constant equals the total energy of the system, . Examples of such systems are the pendulum, the harmonic oscillator or dynamical billiards. , the Hamiltonian does not vary with

Example
Main article: Simple harmonic motion One example of time independent Hamiltonian system is the harmonic oscillator. Consider the system defined by the coordinates and whose Hamiltonian is given by

The Hamiltonian of this system does not depend on time and thus the energy of the system is conserved.

Symplectic structure
One important property of a Hamiltonian dynamical system is that it has a symplectic structure.[1] Writing

the evolution equation of the dynamical system can be written as

where

and IN the NN identity matrix. One important consequence of this property is that an infinitesimal phase-space volume is preserved.[1] A corollary of this is the Liouville's theorem: Liouville's theorem:[show]

Examples

Dynamical billiards Planetary systems, more specifically, the n-body problem. Canonical general relativity

See also

Action-angle coordinates Liouville's theorem Integrable system

References
1. ^ a b c d e Ott, Edward (1994). Chaos in Dynamical Systems. Cambridge University Press.

Further reading

Treschev, D., & Zubelevich, O. (2010). Introduction to the perturbation theory of Hamiltonian systems. Heidelberg: Springer Audin, M., & Babbitt, D. G. (2008). Hamiltonian systems and their integrability. Providence, R.I: American Mathematical Society. Zaslavsky, G. M. (2007). The physics of chaos in Hamiltonian systems. London: Imperial College Press. Dickey, L. A. (2003). Soliton equations and Hamiltonian systems. Advanced series in mathematical physics, v. 26. River Edge, NJ: World Scientific. Almeida, A. M. (1992). Hamiltonian systems: Chaos and quantization. Cambridge monographs on mathematical physics. Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press.]

External links

Hamiltonian Systems at Scholarpedia, curated by James Meiss.

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