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Higher-order differential equations and higher-order lagrangian mechanics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

M. Crampin
Affiliation:
Faculty of Mathematics, The Open University, Milton Keynes M K7 6AA, U.K.
W. Sarlet
Affiliation:
Instituut voor Theoretische Mechanika, Rijksuniversiteit Gent, B-9000 Gent, Belgium
F. Cantrijn
Affiliation:
Instituut voor Theoretische Mechanika, Rijksuniversiteit Gent, B-9000 Gent, Belgium

Extract

The study of higher-order mechanics, by various geometrical methods, in the framework of the theory of higher-order tangent bundles or jet spaces, has been undertaken by a number of authors recently: for example, Tulczyjew [16, 17], Rodrigues [14, 15] de León [8], Krupka and Musilova [11, and references therein]. In this article we wish to complement these studies by approaching the subject from a new point of view, one which we developed for second-order differential equation fields and first-order Lagrangian mechanics in [19]. In particular, our aim is to show that many of the results we obtained there may be extended to the higher-order case.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Philosophical Society 1986

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References

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