Isotropic submanifolds and the inverse problem for mechanical constrained systems

The inverse problem of the calculus of variations consists in determining if the solutions of a given system of second order differential equations correspond with the solutions of the Euler-Lagrange equations for some regular Lagrangian. This problem in the general version remains unsolved. Here, we contribute to it with a novel description in terms of Lagrangian submanifolds of a symplectic manifold, also valid under some adaptation for the non-autonomous version. One of the advantages of this new point of view is that we can easily extend our description to the study of the inverse problem of the calculus of variations for second order systems along submanifolds. In this case, instead of Lagrangian submanifolds we will use isotropic submanifolds, covering both the nonholonomic and holonomic constraints for autonomous and non-autonomous systems as particular examples. Moreover, we use symplectic techniques to extend these isotropic submanifolds to Lagrangian ones, allowing us to describe the constrained solutions as solutions of a variational problem now without constraints. Mechanical examples such as the rolling disk are provided to illustrate the main results.

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