Topology and Geometry seminar
Speaker: Manoj Gopalkrishnan, EE Department
Time and Date: at 4:00 PM on 28th September 2018
Venue: Room 215
Title: Classical Mechanics and Symplectic Geometry
Abstract: Many of the historical motivations for symplectic geometry come from classical mechanics. Conversely, classical mechanics can be treated elegantly with the tools of symplectic geometry. We will present a "dictionary" between classical mechanics and symplectic geometry that is well-known to practitioners in both fields, but is often not explicitly taught in beginning courses in either subject, but left to the mathematical maturity of the student to pick up. The dictionary may be of pedagogic value to students embarking on a study of symplectic geometry, allowing them to ground their understanding of notions like Lagrangian submanifolds in concrete physical situations. Our presentation will be broadly based on notes by John Baez which can be found here:
http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/classical/texfiles/2005/book/classical.pdf . We will assume familiarity with basic notions of differential geometry, and some previous exposure to both classical mechanics and symplectic geometry.