Geometrical structures of higher-order dynamical systems and field theories

Zusammenfassung

Geometrical physics is a relatively young branch of applied mathematics that was initiated by the 60's and the 70's when A. Lichnerowicz, W.M. Tulczyjew and J.M. Souriau, among many others, began to study various topics in physics using methods of differential geometry. This "geometrization" provides a way to analyze the features of the physical systems from a global viewpoint, thus obtaining qualitative properties that help us in the integration of the equations that describe them. Since then, there has been a strong development in the intrinsic treatment of a variety of topics in theoretical physics, applied mathematics and control theory using methods of differential geometry. Most of the work done in geometrical physics since its first days has been devoted to study first-order theories, that is, those theories whose physical information depends on (at most) first-order derivatives of the generalized coordinates of position (velocities). However, there are theories in physics in which the physical information depends explicitly on accelerations or higher-order derivatives of the generalized coordinates of position, and thus more sophisticated geometrical tools are needed to model them acurately. In this Ph.D. Thesis we pretend to give a geometrical description of some of these higher-order theories. In particular, we focus on dynamical systems and field theories whose dynamical information can be given in terms of a Lagrangian function, or a Hamiltonian that admits Lagrangian counterpart. More precisely, we will use the Lagrangian-Hamiltonian unified approach in order to develop a geometric framework for autonomous and non-autonomous higher-order dynamical system, and for second-order field theories. This geometric framework will be used to study several relevant physical examples and applications, such as the Hamilton-Jacobi theory for higher-order mechanical systems, relativistic spin particles and deformation problems in mechanics, and the Korteweg-de Vries equation and other systems in field theory.