The purpose of this book is to give the student of physics a basic overview of Lagrangians and Hamiltonians. We will focus on what are called variational techniques in mechanics. The material discussed here includes only topics directly related to the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian techniques. It is not a traditional graduate mechanics text and does not include many topics covered in texts such as those by Goldstein, Fetter and Walecka, or Landau and Lifshitz. To help you to understand the material, I have included a large number of easy exercises and a smaller number of difficult problems. Some of the exercises border on the trivial, and are included only to help you to focus on an equation or a concept. If you work through the exercises, you will better prepared to solve the difficult problems. I have also included a number of worked examples. You may find it helpful to go through them carefully, step by step.

In the previous chapter it was mentioned that there is no general technique for solving the n coupled second-order Lagrange equations of motion, but that Jacobi had derived a general method for solving the 2n coupled canonical equations of motion, allowing one to determine all the position and momentum variables in terms of their initial values and the time.

There are two slightly different ways to solve Hamilton's canonical equations. One is more general, whereas the other is a bit simpler, but is only valid for systems in which energy is conserved. We will go through the procedure for the more general method, then solve the harmonic oscillator problem by using the second method.

Both methods involve solving a partial differential equation for the quantity S that is called “Hamilton's principal function.” The problem of solving the entire system of equations of motion is reduced to solving a single partial differential equation for the function S. This partial differential equation is called the “Hamilton–Jacobi equation.” Reducing the dynamical problem to solving just one equation is quite satisfying from a theoretical point of view, but it is not of much help from a practical point of view because the partial differential equation for S is often very difficult to solve. Problems that can be solved by obtaining the solution for S can usually be solved more easily by other means.

In this chapter we begin by considering canonical transformations. These are transformations that preserve the form of Hamilton's equations. This is followed by a study of Poisson brackets, an important tool for studying canonical transformations. Finally we consider infinitesimal canonical transformations and, as an example, we look at angular momentum in terms of Poisson brackets.

Integrating the equations of motion

In our study of analytical mechanics we have seen that the variational principle leads to two different sets of equations of motion. The first set consists of the Lagrange equations and the second set consists of Hamilton's canonical equations. Lagrange's equations are a set of n coupled second-order differential equations and Hamilton's equations are a set of 2n coupled first-order differential equations.

The ultimate goal of any dynamical theory is to obtain a general solution for the equations of motion. In Lagrangian dynamics this requires integrating the equations of motion twice. This is often quite difficult because the Lagrangian (and hence the equations of motion) depends not only on the coordinates but also on their derivatives (the velocities). There is no known general method for integrating these equations. You might wonder if it is possible to transform to a new set of coordinates in which the equations of motion are simpler and easier to integrate. Indeed, this is possible in some situations.