Quadratic first integrals of autonomous conservative dynamical systems

Abstract

An autonomous dynamical system is described by a system of second order differential equations whose solution gives the trajectories of the system. The solution is facilitated by the use of first integrals (FIs) that are used to reduce the order of the system of differential equations and, if there are enough of them, to determine the solution. Therefore, it is important that there exists a systematic method to determine the FIs. On the other hand, a system of second order differential equations defines a kinetic energy, which provides a symmetric second order tensor called kinetic metric of the system. This metric via its symmetries brings into the scene the numerous methods of differential geometry and hence it is apparent that one should manage to relate the determination of the FIs to the symmetries of the kinetic metric. The subject of this work is to provide a theorem that realizes this scenario. The method we follow considers the generic quadratic FI of the form $I=K_{ab}(t,q^{c})\dot{q}^{a}\dot{q}^{b}+K_{a}(t,q^{c})\dot{q}^{a} +K(t,q^{c})$ where $K_{ab}(t,q^{c}), K_{a}(t,q^{c}), K(t,q^{c})$ are unknown tensor quantities and requires $dI/dt = 0$. This condition leads to a system of differential equations involving the coefficients of $I$ whose solution provides all possible quadratic FIs of this form. We demonstrate the application of the theorem in the classical cases of the geodesic equations and the generalized Kepler potential. We also obtain and discuss the time-dependent FIs.