MA 302: Mechanics

Credits: 3:0

Pre-requisites :

1. Calculus on manifolds; rudiments of Lie theory (the equivalent of Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Section 4.1 of "Foundations of mechanics" by Abraham and Marsden).

This is an introductory course on the foundations of mechanics, focusing mainly on classical mechanics. The laws of classical mechanics are most simply expressed and studied in the language of symplectic geometry. This course can also be viewed as an introduction to symplectic geometry. The role of symmetry in studying mechanical systems will be emphasized.

The core syllabus will consist of Lagrangian mechanics, Hamiltonian mechanics, Hamilton-Jacobi theory, moment maps and symplectic reduction. Additional topics will be drawn from integrable systems, quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics and classical field theory.

Suggested books and references:

1. Ralph Abraham and Jerrold E. Marsden, Foundations of mechanics, Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Co., Inc., Advanced Book Program, Reading, Mass., 1978.
2. Vladimir I. Arnol’d, Mathematical methods of classical mechanics, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 60, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1989.
3. Ana Cannas da Silva, Lectures on symplectic geometry, Lecture Notes in Mathematics, vol. 1764, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2001.
4. Jerrold E. Marsden and Tudor S. Ratiu, Introduction to mechanics and symmetry, second ed., Texts in Applied Mathematics, vol. 17, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1999.

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