A remark on Liouville vector fields and a theorem of Manouchehri

Abstract

In a recent article, Manouchehri proved a ‘Sternberg theorem’ for Liouville vector fields and noticed that it provided normal forms for implicit differential equations and first-order partial differential equations. We establish local and global versions of Moser's celebrated result on volume and symplectic forms when they admit a non-trivial one parameter (pseudo-) group of homotheties—by definition, a Liouville field is the generator of such a flow. The local version implies that two germs of Liouville fields of a symplectic or volume form are conjugate by a diffeomorphism germ which preserves the form if and only if they are conjugate. This contains Manouchehri's theorem.