Additive Invariant Functionals for Dynamical Systems

Abstract

We consider the problem of defining completely a class of additive conservation laws for the generalized Liouville equation whose characteristics are given by an arbitrary system of first-order ordinary differential equations. We first show that if the conservation law, a time-invariant functional, is additive on functions having disjoint compact support in phase space, then it is represented by an integral over phase space of a kernel which is a function of the solution to the Liouville equation. Then we use the fact that in classical mechanics phase space is usually a direct product of physical space and velocity space (Newtonian systems). We prove that for such systems the aforementioned representation of the invariant functionals will hold for conservation laws which are additive only in physical space; i.e., additivity in physical space automatically implies additivity in the whole phase space. We extend the results to include non-degenerate Hamiltonian systems, and, more generally, to include both conservative and dissipative dynamical systems. Some applications of the results are discussed.