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. We
, or
,
.
Problem: Let
be the area enclosed by the closed phase curve corresponding to the energy level . Show that the period of motion along this curve is
equal to
.
Solution: We know from conservation of energy that
and thus the area is equal to
where
are the turning point of the motion. Differentiating under the
integral sign, we find:
Solution: Sorry, I was thinking about the above while Lyle was doing this. I
think it was a Taylor expansion as in the first problem?
Problem: Consider a periodic motion along the closed phase curve corresponding to the energy level . Is it stable in the sense of Liapunov?.
First, we need to define Liapunov stability. Consider a first-order differential
equation
for
. (You can apply this to higher-order ODEs
by changing them to systems of first-order ones). Let
be its solution with
initial condition
. We say
is Liapunov stable if for all
,
there exists
so that if
, and
is the solution to the ODE
with initial condition , then
for all
.
Conceptually, solutions that start close will stay close for all time.
Solution: It is very rare that a periodic motion will be Liapunov stable, for the
following reason. Consider a periodic motion
with period . Given any
, consider all solutions that begin within of
. Suppose one of these
solutions has a period
. Then, after time , our solution returns to
where it started, but our neighbor is lagging behind by some amount . After
2
Phase flow
Given a point
defines a map
to
. This
, there exists
for which
does
Solution: By common sense, one can arrive at the picture shown in Arnold.
However, the question arose as to whether the image was truly a perfect el3
lipse. Lyle said that by direct computation, one can show that it is. Stephanie
presented a way of seeing this by directly computing the phase flow for this
problem (in general, this is impossible to do in closed form). The ODE can be
written as:
Thus,
Since
is symmetric, it can be diagonalized, i.e. written as a product of a
rotation, a diagonal matrix, and the inverse rotation. The first rotation leaves
the circle a circle; the diagonal matrix turns it into an ellipse, and then the
inverse rotation leaves the ellipse an ellipse. (Stephanie also showed how to
use the diagonalization to compute .)
for
. We say is conservative if there exists
(called the potential energy) such that
.
over a circle, you will not get zero, which you would get if were conservative,
since it would be
, where is the initial (and final) point of the
chosen circle (more on this is coming in Section 6). For example, one could
choose
. Another way to see this is not conservative is to
observe that
, whereas these partials would both equal
if
were conservative.
Consider a conservative system. Because of conservation of energy, all phase
curves must lie on the constant-energy hypersurface
. For example, for the two dimensional harmonic oscillator,
, the constantenergy surface is a sphere in four-space. The solution takes the form:
Problem: Show that the phase curves are great circles of this sphere.
Solution: We need to find two linearly independent vectors in
ways perpendicular to
. That is, we seek
for all . In other words, we want:
Thus, we want:
or
Since a 2-by-4 matrix always has at least two linearly independent vectors in
its kernel, we can always find two linearly independent
.
Problem: Show that the set of phase curves for the 2D harmonic oscillator
forms a two-dimensional sphere.
Solution: The set of all great circles of the constant-energy sphere is isomorphic to the set of planes in containing the origin, which one can show to be
four-dimensional. Evidently in this case we can not achieve all great circles as
phase curves. Indeed, since the above 2-by-4 matrix has special structure, not
all possible pairs of
can occur as its nullvectors.
We can rewrite the solutions as:
are equal if
, and
mod
(b)
(c)
Now, consider a sphere in with height and bottom at the origin. Let
be the height of a point on the sphere and
its azimuthal angle. Set
and
. I believe that using the above claim, this map is the
desired isomorphism from the 2-sphere onto the set of phase curves.
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