Abstract
The motion of a conservative classical system is considered as a geodesic flow on a Riemannian manifold. Expressions for various curvature tensors are derived. It is shown that the Riemann tensor of a conservative system with N degrees of freedom is defined by 1/2N(N-1) curvatures cij(iijijij at a given point in configuration space are negative. Negative curvature turns out to be a rare phenomenon, although it is found in more than half of the configuration space of Lennard-Jones systems at low density and energy E=0.

This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit: