A new look at second-order equations and Lagrangian mechanics

Abstract
To each second-order equation field Gamma on a tangent bundle TM, the authors associate a particular subset XGamma * of 1-forms on TM. Lagrangian systems then are characterised by the property that XGamma * contains an element which is non-degenerated and exact. For general second-order equation fields Gamma , they study type (1,1) tensor fields preserving both XGamma * and a kind of dual set of vector fields XGamma . Finally, they establish some theorems concerning Xgamma *, which cover known results in Lagrangian mechanics.

This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit: