Gauge fields and Sternberg-Weinstein Approximation of Poisson Manifolds

Abstract

The motion of a classical particle in a gravitational and a Yang-Mills field was described by S. Sternberg and A. Weinstein by a particular Hamiltonian system on a Poisson manifold known under the name of Sternberg-Weinstein phase space. This system leads to the generalization of the Lorentz equation of motion first discovered by Wong. The aim of this work is to show that inversely, a Hamiltonian H on a general Poisson manifold, with the property that its differential vanishes on a Lagrangian submanifold X of a symplectic leaf and is generic in any other direction, naturally defines a metric on X, as well as a principal connection form on a canonical principal fiber bundle on X. These fields, which are credited to model a gravitational and a Yang-Mills field on X, respectively, define a linearized Hamiltonian system of Wong type on a canonical linearized Poisson manifold at X locally isomorphic to a Sternberg-Weinstein phase space. In addition, H is shown to define scalar fields which first appeared in a theory of Einstein and Mayer. In the presence of a coisotropic constraint, the reduced system can be regarded as the phase space of particles in gravitational, Yang-Mills and Higgs fields. We further show that all our constructions are locally related to usual gauge and Kaluza-Klein theory via symplectic realization.